Living & Arts

Filmgoing in Philly: Week One

BY MICHAEL GLUK , ISAAC HAN , and ALEX HO

In print | April 2, 2009

The two-week Philadelphia Film Festival is currently running until April 6. Which films made the cut for our writers and which didn’t? The Phoenix reviews a selection of the festival’s features, some of which you should look out for and some of which you should avoid.

Saving Grace B. Jones

Whenever my parents tell me about their childhood, I always feel like every vivid story should be committed to paper and pen, or perhaps, in my wildest dreams, on celluloid. Veteran actress and singer Connie Stevens’ fictional feature debut, “Saving Grace B. Jones,” which premiered at the Philadelphia Film Festival on Saturday March 28, seems to largely operate with that same kind of nostalgia for a bygone time. The film’s quixotically anecdotal opening sequence begins at the entrance to a movie theater in Brooklyn, and the narration, spoken by Stevens herself, locates the film’s setting as “smack dab in the middle of an America only seen in movies.” If these moments are any indication, Stevens’ nostalgia for her childhood memories is downright cinematic in her mind. Sadly, “Saving Grace B. Jones” privileges this overpowering nostalgia, which audiences will likely find hard to access themselves, over any kind of coherent story with a point.

The most fascinating aspect of “Saving Grace B. Jones” comes up early in the film, when ten-year old Carrie (Rylee Fansler), the stand-in for Stevens’ childhood self, is told by a new friend that she suffers from a trauma. Trauma abounds in the film. When Carrie witnesses a brutal murder on the streets of her hometown, Brooklyn, she is brought to a small Missouri town to recover with a relative for the summer of 1951. Yet, when Carrie arrives, she finds that her host, Landy Bretthorse (Michael Biehn), has his share of problems as well, namely in his sister Grace Jones (Tatum O’Neal). Grace has suffered a traumatic accident that has left her insane in an asylum in Oklahoma City. When Landy, ever the loving brother, makes the controversial decision to bring Grace back to the town, her mysterious ailment – compounded with a flooding disaster along the banks of the Mississippi – bring even more traumatic tragedy to the story.

This frighteningly unclear and convoluted cycle of trauma seems to be the plot thread that will give the film its true weight. The town’s weather, a constant rollercoaster between sunny and stormy, is a great reflection of the characters’ precarious efforts to rehabilitate the tempestuous Grace. But any potential in this storyline is ultimately squandered and trivialized by Stevens’ insistence on portraying as generic and candy-colored a small Midwest town as possible. Except for Grace’s insanity, the town apparently suffers from no problems whatsoever. One of our first looks at the town is an eerily irony-free sequence of Landy’s wife, Bea Bretthouse (Penelope Ann Miller), cheerily executing her homemaker duties. The town is even perfect to the point of unintentional anachronism when a thoroughly modern rock song plays on the soundtrack to signify Carrie’s fun time at a military school dance. The film simply lacks a sense of a real, living, breathing 1950s town.

As is to be expected from many a directorial debut, “Saving Grace B. Jones” has a consistently rough time telling its story. Long expositional dialogue often doesn’t adequately narrate the back-story. The film swings awkwardly between blissful experiences for Carrie and incredibly dark moments. Dramatic beats are for the most part badly executed, which is unfortunate, since the actors put great effort into portraying palpably loving relations between their characters. Part of the problem is the distractingly ADHD editing, which would be more at home in a Michael Bay feature and blocks out any possible glimpse of shrewd acting from the performances. What should be the show-stopping performance of the film by Tatum O’Neal as Grace is only passable, through no fault of O’Neal, but because of the character’s nebulous nature. But the role is much more satisfying in the context of O’Neal’s own persona as the once Academy-award winning child actor, who both is playing an individual attempting to restart her life and is actually attempting to restart her career in this histrionic role. If O’Neal’s final outrageous appearance in the film doesn’t qualify as camp, I don’t know what does.

In retrospect, the overall muddled feel of the film is probably not unlike Stevens’ own recollection of that summer. Still, the film could have been much better served with a clearer story and a less clichéd depiction of small town Americana. Like the character Grace Jones herself, there seems to be no saving this film.

By Alex Ho

Rumba

Premiering in the first week of the Philadelphia Film Festival, “Rumba” is a Belgian film about two married teachers, Dominique (Dominique Abel) and Fiona (Fiona Gordon), who double as dance champions. On the way back from a dance competition, the duo gets involved in a car accident that puts an end to their days of dancing glory. A brain injury causes Dominique to suffer from short-term memory loss; Fiona loses one of her legs. Though they can no longer dance competitively, this tragic loss doesn’t prevent them from living brightly; their love for life and for each other carry them through the tough times.

Despite the intrinsically tragic plot, “Rumba” is a comedy full of absurdism, slapstick and sight gags. The way that Dominique and Fiona cope with their disabilities is humorous in the same way that Dory’s short-term memory loss in “Finding Nemo” is humorous. In one scene, Dominique is cooking dinner. Forgetting that he had already completed one step of the recipe, Dominique keeps adding eggs into the mixing bowl, three at a time. Soon he runs out and must go to the supermarket to buy more. In another scene, Fiona and Dominique go to the supermarket but assume that the door is automatic. They keep waving and jumping at the door, hoping it will open, until a man approaches the two and just opens the door. Much of the humor in the film stems from the way that Dominique and Fiona interact with the world. It’s a kind of physical comedy that has a broad appeal to audiences across cultures.

Ultimately, dance becomes a vehicle for expressing Dominique and Fiona’s happiness, love and raison d’être. In a scene immediately after they are fired from their teaching jobs, Dominique and Fiona’s shadows dance on the wall to show how dance freed them and enhanced their lives before the accident. As Dominique and Fiona grieve the loss of their jobs, their shadows share an entertaining and well-choreographed dance that provides a counterpoint to the tragedy that has led them to this place in their lives. Scenes such as these, in which Dominique and Fiona’s love keeps their lives from being fully negative, make this film very touching and inspirational.

“Rumba” is a heartwarming film with a clear theatre influence. It is not a film in its truest sense as an expression through cinematography. Rather, it is a piece of theatre captured on film. This is not to say that the film is lacking, but that films from different parts of the world reflect different influences depending on the prominent mode of expression that rules the area. European films, especially those from Central to Eastern Europe, tend to be like filmed pieces of theatre. “Rumba” reflects this tradition, including a theatre-like use of set space. In one scene, Dominique and Fiona move between the bathroom and the bedroom in a shoebox cutout set. The two rooms are shown simultaneously with the wall between the two as a divider as if you had made a set in a shoebox and were looking in on it. When Dominique and Fiona are in the separate parts of the house in this set, they can be seen as divided both figuratively and literally as a result of their disabilities. Rather than just interacting with their surroundings as people do in their daily lives, the actors here use the space to express the tone of the scene.

It was a pleasure to see “Rumba,” and hopefully there are more gems like it in the festival circuit that have yet to be discovered.

By Isaac Han

No Boundaries

Though initially scheduled for but one showing, popular demand — or so I assume — pushed the number of screenings of “No Boundaries,” the directorial debut of Jake Willing and Violet Mendoza, to three to accommodate a large interest. However, the only alluring or appealing quality I can find in the film is its location. “No Boundaries” was shot in Philadelphia by an all-Philly cast and crew, and the number of audience members with personal investment in the production was palpably evidenced in the excited cacophony of mostly middle-aged Philadelphians calling across the theater to one another.

The subject matter itself could also have drawn the sellout crowds. “No Boundaries” chronicles the immigration experience of protagonist Isabel, a Hispanic woman who illegally entered the United States through Canada and made her way down to Philadelphia to start anew while living with her cousin. Both characters came to the United States equipped with near-fluent English, but while the film does not capture the experiences of the majority of illegal immigrants, it certainly represents an important subset. This immigration scenario, of course, shares the limelight with a personal drama, Isabel’s relationship with Christopher. While the idea of a film exploring the incredibly polemic issue of immigration in the context of our immediate community of Philadelphia is undoubtedly fascinating, the structure and presentation seemed to lose focus and to lack creativity.

Fitting expectations, the film contextualizes the ensuing drama by opening with a scene of Isabel’s troubled home life, depicting a tearful goodbye at her ailing mother’s bedside as she promises to send remittance to her family. While this image occasionally resurfaces in flashbacks (one of which, strangely, occurs a mere ten minutes after the scene’s initial depiction) or briefly in conversation with Christopher, the issues of immigration and abandonment are soon forgotten in favor of Isabel and Christopher’s exceedingly cheesy romance.

Their relationship develops into a Hollywood-like chimera, exhibiting the sort of sickeningly contrived portrayals of romance that viewers hope to find refuge from in an indie flick such as this. Lines like “I know that, for some reason, we were meant to be together in this garden on this day” (approximately) precede the couple’s first kiss. Even the complications of their romance are clichéd. It is soon revealed that Christopher is (no way!) an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer, a problematic vocation given that Isabel immigrated illegally (a conflict apparently best addressed by reiterating cliché after cliché after cliché.)

Despite its lack of a creative plotline or its uninspiring dialogue, the film certainly had its merits. Directors Jake Willing and Violet Mendoza did a good job with the camera work considering the film’s low budget, successfully utilizing techniques like flashbacks and rapidly-shifting camera angles (forgive my utter ignorance of film jargon) to create drama and tension. However, these glossy film techniques smack of those utilized more successfully in higher-budget mainstream film. Overall, the film can be described by a lackluster “decent.” The most disappointing and frustrating aspect of the viewing experience is that, in the context of a film festival meant to foster innovation and experimentation, “No Boundaries” adheres dogmatically to age-old Hollywood tropes.

By Michael Gluk