48th San Francisco Film Festival Part 1

It was exactly ten years since I first attended the San Francisco International Film Festival. Thanks to an old school acquaintance at the time, not only did I get a chance to chat with Jiang Wen on the back of my friend’s car (he was showing his directorial debut “In the Days of Sun”), I also happened to crush Joan Chen’s dinner party in her beautiful Pacific Heights house. I no longer remember any details of these encounters other than the arrogance of both celebrities. I could not blame them anyway. What would possibly make them curious about me?! I was then a Stanford geek who goofed away a lot of time in front of my VCR watching tapes after tapes of foreign films (checked out from our media library). I thought I would be able to talk about films with them, but little did I know what a stupid brat I was.

Since then I have been a loyal patron of this festival, devoting some of best sunny days in Kabuki within those two weeks. On weekends I could watch three in a day. Voyeuristic by nature, I enjoy escaping into these alien cultures and faraway landscapes. But I also tended to select films from directors I had heard about, or films that were in competition in Cannes or Berlin film festival, just to reduce the “miss” rate in these hit-and-miss gambles. Over the years, the ticket price also crept up, outpacing the inflation rate, but the number of films I watched did not decrease accordingly. As a film buff/snob, film festival is a ritual I need to hold on to.

By accident or by trend, my favorite three films from this festival are all from female directors. Clair Dennis, who always surprises audience with her unconventional styles, pulled another interesting film (The Intruder) together by constructing suspense, fragmentary scenes, and conflicting story lines. It leapt from French mountains to Pusan and ended up in Tahiti, following an old man with secret identities who went through some heart surgery and had some issue with his son (first we thought we saw the son, but in the later part he was looking for the son who was left in Tahiti). Clair seemed to have cut and paste the plot and deliberately made it inconsistent and baffling, but this freedom at will opens up all kinds of possibilities to create very atmospheric and spectacular scenes, with mysteries lurking behind. Like David Lynch’s “Moholland Drive”, the film can be interpreted in many ways, while the real theme remains elusive, or Claire may never have a clear one except for a set of ideas and moods and visual impressions. The film was not made to entertain. It aims to take you through a meandering global journey, through gorgeous landscapes, through tropical storms and winter blizzard, through uncommon events, through solitude and memory and pain and loss, through what is called life.

I watched Argentinean director Lurecia Martel’s first film “La Cienaga” in Castro Theatre a couple of years ago and still remember the opening scene vividly. She has the uncanny ability to frame the most ordinary scenes with full tension and suspense, and her characters tread through daily life as if they could step on landmines anytime. Once again she pulled the same tricks in her latest film “The Holy Girl”, and instead of using a rundown swimming pool, she put the characters in a hotel and around a thermal pool, where sounds echo and dilapidated interior harbors forbidden desires and wakening sexuality of girlhood. Lots of close-up shots and unsymmetrical camera angles are used effectively to observe all the nuances of the psychological changes. But the new film can’t measure up to her last one. The directing is flawless, but the story is narrowly-focused and too intimate study of the girlhood struggles. It lacks the broader appeal of her previous film, which gives more context and sense of places and time. 

Ever since Central Station and City of God came out, Brazil immediately brings to mind images of Samba and gangster fight and poverty of children to people’s mind. The new filmAlmost Brothers from another female director Luica Muratplays into these clichés but it is nevertheless another impressive endeavor to tap into the same fertile story ground of racial polarization, violence and political repressions. Film makers in Brazil, more than anywhere else in the world, feel obligated to portrait a society in chaos, either to fight injustice or to reveal the root of their alarming social problems. Murat herself has spent time in prison during the 70s and this film, although spanning through 50 years, really centered on the prison period. The two protagonists, one white and one black, grew up together from two different backgrounds and reunited briefly in the prison but eventually drifted apart. One would wonder how a female director can make a film about male prison, where machismo is on its ultimate extreme. But Murat proved that she could just do this job as well, with a toughness and cool-headedness that can rival a man.