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NEW REVIEWS
D.W. Young’s THE BOOKSELLERS (US/Documentary)
Available to rent via the Gene Siskel Film Center here
When Bibi, the owner of Imperial Fine Books on the Upper East Side of New York City, talks about the moment she fell for fine, leather-bound books, a documentary that already had my sympathy won me over completely. My maternal grandfather was a bookbinder who fashioned finely tooled, gilt leather bindings, and a photo album he created is among my treasured possessions. The family connection matters, but my appreciation for a nearly vanished craft put me in the company of the like minds of antiquarian booksellers, archivists, curators, and writers whose world director D.W. Young explores in THE BOOKSELLERS. Young covers a lot of ground, from the history of bookstores and rare booksellers in New York to the effect of technology on the sales of physical books. Most intriguing are the collector/booksellers who fill their homes, shops, and warehouses with books and other artifacts they love. Young probes why they do what they do—the beauty of the books, the (formerly) years-long search for a particular volume, the preservation of underrepresented histories in archives like the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. A visit to Priceline founder Jay Walker’s Library of the History of Human Imagination, whose design is fashioned after an M.C. Escher drawing, is both fascinating and an homage to extreme acquisitiveness. But then, people of much more modest means in this film have amassed even more than Walker. If you are a book lover, and especially if you are seized by the collection bug, THE BOOKSELLERS will unite you with your people. (2019, 99 min) MF
Elem Klimov’s COME AND SEE (Belarus/Soviet Union)
Available to stream on the Criterion Channel (subscription required)
The horrors and atrocities of World War II have long been documented in film, and Elim Klimov’s COME AND SEE is one of their most harrowing depictions. Set in 1943, the narrative follows Floyra (Aleksey Kravchenko in his captivating debut role), a young Belarusian boy who’s eager to join the Soviet army in fighting off the invading German forces after he finds an old rifle buried in the sand from some unnamed battle. Floyra’s youthful exuberance, innocence, and hopefulness are soon painstakingly stripped from him bit by bit as the realities of the war are witnessed firsthand. Klimov’s film is not for the weak of heart; it’s extremely unflinching in its presentation of the brutality of conflict. Outright war-games are eschewed; instead, Klimov uses a series of motifs representing an unrelenting descent into inhumanity, and the erosion of Floyra’s spirit. Individual struggles of various characters are juxtaposed as each face their own personal hells and tragedies. Much of the film’s visceral power is due to its phenomenal use of practical effects and sound design, which place the viewer directly in the carnage. This creates a disorienting sense of place at times—compounding the utter confusion and chaos the characters must endure. The only sliver of comfort and familiarity the film provides is through its use of Mozart in its sparse score, but which becomes lost in the general cacophony. COME AND SEE is staunchly anti-war in tone. It is a film both so hauntingly beautiful yet so resolutely bleak that it will stay with its viewers long after. (1985, 142 min) KC
István Szabó’s CONFIDENCE (Hungary)
Available to rent via the Gene Siskel Film Center here
Shot largely in low light by the great Lajos Koltai, CONFIDENCE conjures up an atmosphere of hushed intimacy that’s alternately romantic and suspenseful. The film takes place in the final days of World War II, and though the historical trappings are intricately realized, the concerns are ultimately abstract. Ildikó Bánsági stars as a woman whose husband, involved with Hungary’s anti-Nazi resistance, is captured by the secret police when the story starts. Before she can get a handle on her situation, Bánsági is grabbed by another member of the resistance, who tells her she’ll need to lie low for a while under an assumed identity. All the details have been prepared for her; she just needs to live with a strange man (also hiding from the Nazis) and pretend to be his wife. Péter Andorai plays the stranger, a stern, paranoid individual who tries to control every aspect of his new “marriage” so as not to arouse suspicion. Seldom leaving their small apartment, the man and woman grow closer, eventually becoming lovers and confidantes. Writer-director István Szabó keeps it ambiguous as to whether the couple’s attraction is genuine or the product of desperation (the lovers have been separated from their spouses and are living in fear), yet this ambiguity fades to the background as the central relationship develops with emotional specificity. Szabó brings us into the characters’ thoughts with Resnais-like cutaways to their memories or visualizations of their fleeting concerns; such moments render the WWII setting vague and the lovers’ inner lives vivid, effectively inverting the dynamic one usually encounters in war films. While CONFIDENCE introduces the heroine first, the film comes to follow both characters, whether alone or separately, and the evenness of characterization keeps one’s sympathy in flux. This seems fitting for a movie about whether we can truly know other people—and, conversely, whether we’re drawn to people because of their mysteriousness. Reportedly Szabó tried to make CONFIDENCE more straightforward than his earlier, more experimental films in an effort to gain a wider audience. What makes the movie so fascinating, however, isn’t its eschewal of narrative complexity, but the way it integrates complexity into a streamlined story. Even its quietest or most romantic moments, the film hurtles forward with the intensity of a thriller. (1980, 106 min) BS
Films by Karen Johannesen (US/Experimental)
Available for free at the artists’ Vimeo pages (links in text)
Local Super-8 filmmaker Karen Johannesen has a way of impressing upon the small-gauge frame more physicality and energy than seems possible. She uses forceful single-frame dances and abrupt shifts in pattern and focus to explore that fundamental subject of cinema—light. GREEN CURTAIN (2002) is a modest, mysterious interior portrait that cryptically reveals the natural world behind the titular texture. PINK OPAQUE (2003) is a hand-processed cameraless film with fabric grids and threads creating swirling and shaking rose and bubblegum motifs. LIGHT SPEED (2007) is a forceful city-film dance alternating interior and exterior spaces using window frames and shades to create a geometric barrage. DAYLIGHT & THE SUN (2009) has moments of gentle natural contemplation interrupted with unnerving shocks and an eerie sense of mourning. CHROMATIC (2015) is a masterful, hypnotic, flaring floral spurt of single frames of lilies and roses. Between her work as a filmmaker, curator, and advocate for the sometimes-humble Super-8 film format, Johannesen is an invaluable Chicago cinematic voice. (2002-15, 25 min total) JBM
Robert Benton’s THE LATE SHOW (US)
Available for rent and purchase on Amazon, Fandango Now, Google Play, Vudu, and other services
Robert Benton is best known as the man whose first screenplay—BONNIE AND CLYDE—kicked off the American New Wave with a literal bang in 1967. His directing career has been overshadowed because of that iconic film, but his forays into genre films are consistently interesting, including his anti-Western BAD COMPANY (1972) and his gangster pic BILLY BATHGATE (1991). THE LATE SHOW is a wacky homage to THE MALTESE FALCON (1941) in which a hardboiled plot is scooped up and plopped into the middle of New Age Los Angeles. Art Carney plays Ira Wells, an aging private investigator who lives quietly in a room he rents in the home of an elderly lady (Ruth Nelson) whose lineage hails back to Mrs. Wilberforce in THE LADYKILLERS (1955). The film opens with the arrival of iconic noir actor Howard Duff playing a former associate of Wells’ who has been gutshot. As he lays dying, promising Wells to cut him in on a big deal, Wells vows to find his killer. A femme fatale, a shady fence and his gunsel, and a McGuffin all appear, but the character that places this film squarely in the 1970s is Margo Sterling (Lily Tomlin), a dippy actress/agent/costume designer/drug dealer who offers him $25 to find her cat, Winston, who has been catnapped and held for ransom. The film’s title refers not only to the programs on TV stations across the country that filled their late-night programming with public-domain movies, but also to the films and commercials that formed the peculiar creatures of these nights. In this sense, THE LATE SHOW is an apt tribute to a broadcast form that has migrated and been reduced to an anytime grab bag on YouTube. Watching Carney play the straight man to the antics of the caricatures all around him makes him look like Dorothy in the Land of Oz. Tomlin’s improvisatory style and perfect cadence turn Benton’s script into pure genius, with lines like “You know what I had to go through to hassle up this dough? I laid off four ounces of pure red Colombian for $15 an ounce. … There was so much resin in it, it made your lips stick together” and “This little kitty is just a little honey bun. Give this little cat a break!” The off-kilter comedy, dead-on satire, and a car chase unlike anything I’ve ever seen make THE LATE SHOW a thoroughly enjoyable experience. (1977, 93 min) MF
Carlos Vermut’s MAGICAL GIRL (Spain/France)
Available free on Kanopy through participating libraries with your library card
Midway through Spanish filmmaker Carlos Vermut’s mordant sophomore feature MAGICAL GIRL, Bárbara (Bárbara Lennie), a former prostitute in the S&M scene around whom much of the action centers, meets Oliver Zoco (Miquel Insua), a wealthy paraplegic who runs a brothel for sadists. Married to a psychiatrist who keeps her on a short leash and desperate for $7,000 to pay off a blackmailer, Bárbara has agreed to a one-off session with one of Zoco’s clients. Zoco asks her if she likes bullfighting, and they agree that neither of them has a taste for it. Zoco then offers the following analysis of the place of bullfighting in Spain: “It is curious that Spain is the country where bullfighting is most popular. Do you know why Spain is a country in eternal conflict? Because we are not sure if we are a rational or an emotional country. Nordic people, for example, act in accordance with their brains. However, the Arabs or Latinos have accepted their passionate side without blame. Both, they know which are their strong points. Spaniards are balanced right in the middle. That’s the way we are. And what is bullfighting? The representation of the struggle between instinct and technique, between emotion and reason. We have to accept our instincts and learn to deal with them as if they were a bull, trying not to be destroyed by them.” This speech is the key to the quietly savage tale Vermut has put on the screen for our amusement and horror. In sadomasochistic relations, it is the submissive who controls the action. MAGICAL GIRL shows just how much two seemingly vulnerable and submissive females control and bring about the ruin of the men in their lives. One of them is the picture of innocence—Alicia (Lucía Pollán), the 12-year-old, leukemia-stricken daughter of unemployed literature teacher and single father Luis (Luis Bermejo) who loves anime, especially Magical Girl Yukiko. Her fondest wishes are to possess the outrageously expensive costume Yukiko wears and to live to be 13. When her father discovers she likely will not get her second wish, he decides he will grant her first. The second submissive is Bárbara, who is kept in luxurious bondage by her husband, Alfredo (Israel Elejalde). Both Alicia and Bárbara depend on others to take care of them. Both are sick and find ways to use that sickness to get what they want. As with any good bullfight, Vermut waves his red cape and punctuates these fairly straightforward, intertwined stories like a picador with some lacerating scenes of seriocomedy, as when Bárbara splits her forehead open when she head-butts a mirror or Alicia dances in manic delight to some Japanese music, clutches her side and suddenly collapses out of the frame. And the frivolousness of Luis’ mission forms a dead-on critique of affirmative parenting. The undercurrent of economic crisis in Spain adds an air of desperation, and Luis’ instruction to Bárbara to put the money in a copy of the Spanish constitution held at a public library because “nobody will read it” offers a sardonic commentary on the state of neoliberal policies in Spain. His men—all educated intellectuals—often have the mere illusion of control, but when they succumb to their emotions, their ferocity is something to behold. Vermut moves us slyly between the poles of reason and passion. The final victory, perhaps unsurprisingly, goes to the bull. (2014, 127 min) MF
Problematizing Pleasure/Punk Theory (Experimental)
Available for free on VBD TV until 4/24
The second program in the VDB TV: Decades series, curated by video artist and educator Steve Reinke, is called “Problematizing Pleasure/Punk Theory,” and, accordingly, contains videos made between 1981 and 1987. In the accompanying notes, Reinke clarifies his decision to open the program with Cecilia Condit’s POSSIBLY IN MICHIGAN (1983, 12 min)—which, just a few years ago, resurfaced in popular discourse as a YouTube and TikTok meme—by explaining that it “problematizes pleasure, mixes delight with dread, until one doesn’t know how or where one is being tickled, or when the tickling is breaking through the skin.” One would be hard-pressed to think up a better description of Condit’s iconic work; it’s best watched as much and as often as possible to fully absorb its satisfying uncanniness. Described as an “operatic fairytale,” the video depicts two women with an inexplicable love for perfume being stalked by a masked man at the mall. The predator-victim dynamic is reversed at the end when the women kill the man and eat him. It’s like a nightmare masquerading as a dream, the images and its soundtrack—Reinke references YouTube Poop as the “[t]he naughty little brother of ASMR,” another description that captures the beguiling effect its sounds and music will have on viewers—problematized by virtue of pleasure. It’s fun to do an Internet search for the video; results range from a perfume forum where an enthusiast asks about the bottles featured in the video to a multi-part post on a conspiracy theory website where the author charmingly attempts to deconstruct its meaning. It’s appropriate that the video has taken on a second life as a meme, a contemporary mode that often deals in, what else?, problematic pleasure. Tony Oursler’s free-association odyssey GRAND MAL (1981, 23 min) features a similar tone as POSSIBLY IN MICHIGAN, a mollifying tenor that exists in stark contrast to the images. The aesthetic is punk epitomized, with small, crudely constructed sets in which people (mostly errant body parts, really) exist as interlopers; worms reign supreme, utterly indifferent to their dominion. “GRAND MAL mocks human agency,” writes Reinke. “The worm rules, if with a stupid, uncaring blankness. In one section, they—the actual live worms that haunt the video—are meant to run a race, but writhe unconcerned at the starting line as a human voice coaches them on.” In Julie Zando’s HEY BUD (1987, 11 min), the Bud in question is Bud Dwyer, a Pennsylvania government official who committed suicide during a press conference, which was later broadcast on television. For much of the work, two women in formal dresses tend to their personal grooming; toward the end, Zando intercuts distorted footage of Dwyer amid the dominant footage and plays a woman’s voice over the images, breathing heavily, almost pornographically. It puts forth the disunion between voyeurism and exhibitionism, and the pleasure and power inherent in each. Reinke quotes Zando in his accompanying notes: “I don’t want my tapes to act as a light where my role is to flip the switch and illuminate some theoretical concept. I’m more interested in putting the viewer’s finger into the socket, allowing the shock waves to carry the message in a sudden jolt of understanding.” Also included in the program are three more formally daunting but still greatly edifying works: The latter two parts of Dara Birnbaum’s DAMNATION OF FAUST TRILOGY—DAMNATION OF FAUST: WILL-O'-THE-WISP (A DECEITFUL GOAL) (1985, 5 min) and (EVOCATION OF FAUST: CHARMING LANDSCAPE (1987, 7 min)—and Liza Béar’s EARTHGLOW (1983, 8 min). KS
Eric Rohmer's RENDEZVOUS IN PARIS (France)
Available free on Tubi
Who knows what possessed Eric Rohmer, at the ripe old age of 74, to interrupt the making of his “Tales of the Four Seasons,” the third and final of his major film cycles (following “Six Moral Tales” and “Comedies and Proverbs”), in order to knock off this quickie rom-com anthology in 1995? Surely he must have realized that, at his advanced age, each new movie could very well be his last, while also knowing that he had two more features (A SUMMER’S TALE and AN AUTUMN TALE) to shoot. Whatever the reason, we should all thank the cinema gods that he did decide to write and direct this small, unexpected masterpiece consisting of three separate vignettes about meetings—some by chance, others planned—between young men and women in the titular city: RENDEZVOUS IN PARIS conjures the spirit of the Nouvelle Vague more closely than what any of this director’s contemporaries achieved from the 1980s onwards (the only real competition being Jacques Rivette’s UP DOWN FRAGILE from the same year). In fact, the continuity between Rohmer’s first feature, THE SIGN OF LEO, made in 1959, and this—in terms of character, setting, theme and even visual style—is remarkable; Rohmer captures here the vagaries of the human heart by photographing, in handheld, freewheeling 16mm, the relationship dynamics between an amusing gallery of college students, teachers, artists, and other assorted bohemians, with a winning fleetness that suggests a much younger filmmaker. The first story, “The 7 O’clock Rendezvous,” follows a student (Clara Bellar) who improvises a plan to exact revenge on the boyfriend she suspects of cheating on her. Packed with enough characters and intricate plot twists to sustain a whole feature, it is the most conventionally entertaining of the three. The second story, “The Benches of Paris,” depicts a series of meetings in public parks between a young woman in a committed relationship (the superb Aurore Rauscher) and another man, a would-be suitor, with whom she refuses to meet in private. The narrative seems almost meandering until Rohmer arrives at a surprising, and exceedingly clever, punchline of an ending. The third story, “Mother and Child, 1907,” is the best of the lot: it offers a hilarious, satirical portrait of a pretentious/mansplaining painter (Michael Kraft) who stalks a potential female conquest inside and outside of an art gallery near his home studio. Tying all of these stories together are performances by a male/female street-musician duo (both play accordion and sing), who function as a kind of Greek chorus and threaten to turn the whole enterprise into a parody of stereotypical notions of “Gallic charm.” Perhaps this last element is why some critics have dismissed RENDEZVOUS IN PARIS as nothing more than lightweight fluff but there's a reason why no less a luminary than Rivette considered it to be not just his favorite Rohmer movie but a “summit of French cinema.” (1995, 98 min) MGS
Alejandro Amenabar’s TESIS [aka THESIS] (Spain)
Available for rent or purchase on iTunes
There’s a whole thriller/horror films sub-genre of movies about college that I find both incredibly enjoyable and truly fascinating. Not the splatter-by-numbers, B-grade, sorority slasher type material, but a different, rich body of films, with a legacy going back to the 1950s, that are set in the world of niche academia. These movies explore the in-between world of people who are no longer innocent teenagers, but also not quite fully formed adults, yet are sopping wet with hubris because they’re in higher learning. Among these are films concerning students in fields such as anthropology (THE HAUNTING, MIDSOMMAR), medicine (FLATLINERS), or even the well rounded, liberal arts, cross-curricular blend (PRINCE OF DARKNESS). TESIS is one of the great films in this micro-genre, and one that brings slow boil mystery to the halls of academia while still being far more reminiscent of the works of Michael Haneke than of any splatterfest. TESIS centers on Angela, a student studying the effects of violence in the media. After asking her thesis professor for help finding the most violent videos in the school archives she finds him dead in the university’s viewing room of an asthma attack. Curious as to what he was watching when he died, she quietly spirits away the video. On viewing it she is shocked by what appears to be a snuff film featuring the murder of a missing student. Not sure of the video’s authenticity, she befriends a student, known for his collection of extreme horror films and porn, to help her figure out its legitimacy. As the two investigate, it soon becomes apparent that the tape might be real, and that they’ve now put themselves in danger. This is Amenabar’s first feature, made while still a student himself—giving the film a bit of a meta-quality. His youthful eye and energy are assets to what otherwise could have been a by-the-numbers murder mystery, or a didactic exploration of the effects of violence in film. While films like Haneke’s BENNY’S VIDEO or FUNNY GAMES serve to punish the viewer for enjoying the violence presented, TESIS relaxes those reigns a bit and lets one immerse oneself in the suspense of the narrative—all while still keeping a finger pointed sharply back at them. It never lets you forget that people have been forever drawn to violence, in all of its forms: even, and especially, you, the viewer. Amenabar’s talent lies in the ability to balance an accessible story with moral exploration, resulting in a film that was both wildly popular and critically acclaimed in his home country, winning Best Film, Best Original Screenplay, Best New Director, and Best Editing at the 11th Goya Awards (Spain’s Oscars). TESIS exists in the liminal space between SILENCE OF THE LAMBS and BENNY’S VIDEO, an “elevated horror” film 20+ years before the term existed, and one of the smartest scares you’re ever going to find. (1996, 125 min) RJM
Peter Snowdon’s THE UPRISING (UK/International/Documentary)
Available free at https://theuprising.be
I was only hipped to the existence of Peter Snowdon’s extraordinary THE UPRISING when J. Hoberman wrote about it recently in The New York Times, where he called it a “largely unknown masterpiece” and “one of the great movies of the still-young 21st century.” After taking a look, I find I concur. It opens with a title card: “The revolution that this film imagines is based on several real revolutions.” Snowdon, an English journalist, activist, and media artist, has crafted an urgent and ironic experimental documentary about the Arab Spring of 2011, comprised solely of videos posted to Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. He carefully selected about 100 “vernacular videos” and, working with editor and co-writer Bruno Tracq and sound designer Olivier Touche, organized them into his own narrative, which is both a fable about revolutions and a thoughtful essay on the power of video. The film opens, and closes, with cellphone footage of a tornado headed for what looks like any American suburb—it turns out to be Alabama. Then we’re plunged into a cacophony of voices from across the Middle East and North Africa calling for freedom, justice and democracy—ordinary people taking to the streets, smartphones in hand, putting their lives on the line to demand that corrupt dictators begone from Tunisia, Bahrain, Syria, Egypt, Yemen, and Libya. Snowdon organizes this found-footage into thematically-linked “days,” beginning “7 Days ago” and proceeding to an imaginary “today.” It’s told in bursts of passion, lurching emotional high points, interspersed with moments I will leave you to discover: suffice it to say they are moments of sardonic humor, of high, heady times where people weep tears of joy, and finally feel the exhilaration of what it’s like to not be isolated and afraid—to become agents of history. The first-person tense gives the film the immediacy of the unfolding moment. I felt the euphoria of watching tyrants fall. Then, here comes the clampdown: as soldiers fire on peaceful protestors, a voice calls out, “The world must see!” Snowdon, however, has called these Internet videos more than just witnessing, but “a form of action in their own right,” a kind of circulatory system for collective energy. THE UPRISING itself is powerful evidence for this vision. In the end, we witness real-life violence, real bodies broken and dead. As with any recording of abuse of power, I find looking at such footage so disturbing as to be almost nauseating, even while I know watching is necessary: as one man says, where there are no witnesses, everyone’s a liar. I find myself haunted by the final voice we hear. It is a woman’s voice; the time is “yesterday.” “Tomorrow is our hope, our dream, our first step,” she says. And then: “I’ll be waiting for you.” In a faraway land, we see people filling the streets as far as the eye can see. And now it’s today, and that twister is back—and coming to a town near you. (2013, 80 min) SP
Adela Peeva’s WHOSE IS THIS SONG? (Bulgaria/Documentary)
For rent on Vimeo here
As is known by anyone who has been involved in a small turf war—at work, at home, in their community—battle tactics range from negotiation to bullying to subterfuge. The metaphorical fur flies and then settles into an unsightly dustball under the sofa until someone starts pawing at it again and tosses it into the middle of the room. This dynamic repeats itself on larger stages all over the world, one of the most fractious being the Balkans. Bulgarian director Adela Peeva got the idea for WHOSE IS THIS SONG? when she was having dinner at a restaurant in Istanbul with some friends, all of whom hail from different Balkan countries. The band in the restaurant started playing a song, and Peeva and everyone at her table knew it and claimed that the song was from their country. Peeva became intrigued with the idea of tracking down the origins of the song and perhaps using it to start building bridges between these painfully divided countries by discovering a foundation for a common cultural heritage. She travels to Turkey, Greece, Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Macedonia, and Bulgaria to hear the song played by locals. In most of the countries, it is a love song. A number of people say they knew the woman who inspired the song, even claiming to be related to her. Other versions carry religious lyrics of jihad. Peeva plays the song for a group of Serbians. She picks the wrong version (Bosnian), however, and they threaten her and walk out on her. Near the end, Peeva is talking to some fellow Bulgarians who are celebrating a historic battle against the Ottoman Turks. She mentions that the song might be Turkish. She is threatened with lynching. The film ends with night shots of fireworks that set a field on fire. Silhouettes of people beating back the flames with tree branches can be seen, intercut with drunken revelers apparently oblivious to the dangerous situation behind them. I don’t think there could be a better metaphor for the Balkans. Adela Peeva, in a very homely exercise, paints an indelible and tragic portrait of a stricken region. Perhaps for peoples so vanquished and vanquishing as those of the Balkans, some kind of psychic survival depends upon clinging vigorously to national identity and pride. Whether these and other ethnic combatants will eventually decide that pride is an empty prize is anyone’s guess. (2003, 70 min) MF
Lizzie Borden’s WORKING GIRLS (US)
Available for free on the artist’s YouTube page
“John’s here!” “Which one?” This exchange in Lizzie Borden’s WORKING GIRLS—the writer-director’s third feature, made a few years after her seminal BORN IN FLAMES—encapsulates both its wry humor and distinct perspective on the oldest profession. The working girls in question, responsible, among many other tasks, for manning the phones and facilitating guest relations, announce each visitor as they arrive. In this scenario, a man called John comes in, his generic name, a euphemism for others of his kind, made into a joke that’s at once perceptive and perverse, thus abbreviating the film’s viewpoint on sex work. Having come to fruition after Borden spent time interviewing sex workers (some of whom had worked on BORN IN FLAMES), the film centers on Molly (Louise Smith), a well-educated photographer who, it’s shown at the beginning, is in a lesbian relationship; from the get-go, our conception of sex workers is challenged, Borden providing us images against which later images, of a supposedly heterosexual woman enjoying paid sex with strange men, should be compared. Molly works at an elegantly decorated apartment-style brothel centrally located in Manhattan where this day-in-the-life simulacrum largely takes place. She and several other girls—including Gina (Marusia Zach), Dawn (Amanda Goodwin), and April (Janne Peters)—are employed by a madam named Lucy (Ellen McElduff), a former sex worker who’s promoted herself to middle management. The plot oscillates between sessions, with Molly and whichever client has selected her, a motley crew of men who run the gamut from lonely to outright creepy, and in-between moments during which the girls commune in the “living” room, discussing all sorts of topics. The women, and even some of the men, are fascinating, but at times it feels like, in the best possible way, a piece of performance art (not necessarily a play, but something akin to it, meant to act as a microcosm of a macro economy), or, perhaps more disparagingly, an exhibit at a zoo, a way for us outsiders to gawk at people—some may say animals—whose environments, it would seem, are different than ours. The film’s bemused detachment accounts for its subversiveness; its dispassion manifests in a sort of candor that mimics the intent of the film, which is to show that sex work is, in fact, a job, one that its workers drudge through like the rest of us white-collar schleps. Borden once remarked in an interview with CinemaScope: “[T]he greatest compliment I ever got for WORKING GIRLS was when some guy said to me afterwards, ‘I had a boss just like that.’ It really is about capitalism.” Borden also pointed out that Molly’s eventual desire to leave the profession, brought on by Lucy’s insistence that she work a double shift, isn’t just because of sexual exploitation, but due to labor exploitation as well. The film was distributed by Miramax; per Borden, Harvey Weinstein had wanted to market it as an “erotic comedy.” Like the aforementioned joke, this contention epitomizes the film’s dichotomy. What the ‘Johns’ might think is a singular, erotic experience—a lark, not unlike those in a sexy comedy—is, in actuality, just one of many for the working girls. (1986, 90 min) KS
RERUN REVIEWS FOR FILMS WITH SPECIALTY AVAILABILITY
Yaron Zilberman's INCITEMENT (Israel)
Available to rent via the Music Box Theatre here
From the perspective of the diaspora, recent Israeli cinema can look sadly predictable: a gentle ribbing of the ultra-Orthodox, but nothing that could actually offend them; a lament for a vanished age of liberal consensus, without any expression of culpability or critical thought about the moribund state of the Labor Party; a desire for peace and understanding with the Palestinian people, if not the stomach for the radical reorientation of Israeli society this would require. Samuel Maoz's FOXTROT, the 2017 winner of Israel's Ophir Award, ends with a middle-aged couple lamenting the dance of violence and retribution in which they've been swept up—passively, as if the Israeli people have no political agency, no avenue for registering a dissenting view or building a new political coalition around it. In this context, Yaron Zilberman's INCITEMENT, the 2019 Ophir recipient, is a swift punch to the gut, a taboo meditation on recent Israeli history that locates and names the maladies coursing through the body politic. INCITEMENT is nominally a handheld, faux-verité account of the radicalization of Yigal Amir, following him down the perverse path that would culminate with his 1995 assassination of Yitzhak Rabin. Some critics and festival programmers have been hung up on the question of whether the film glamorizes or humanizes Amir, but though he's in every scene, INCITEMENT isn't especially about him; as the title implies, the film's greatest strength is its uncanny evocation of the climate of equivocation and fear in the mid-'90s, the ubiquity of violent rhetoric in Orthodox settler communities, the absurdly unhinged comparisons between Rabin and Hitler in the wake of the Oslo accords, and all the rest of the right-wing fervor that boiled over inevitably, tragically, definitively in November '95. With its scenes of bored teenagers in communes transfixed by recitations of Maimonides and endless Talmudic exegeses, INCITEMENT occasionally suggests the negative-image of an Olivier Assayas film: a diabolical hang-out movie that regards reactionary youth with an intense, near-anthropological stupor. If not Amir, INCITEMENT implies, someone else—anyone else—would have taken his place. To that end, the most heroic (and, so far, fruitless) task of Zilberman's movie is drawing together reams of archival footage, effortlessly interweaved with the film's precise recreations, to remind us that many of the instigators of Rabin's assassination are still with us—not least Benjamin Netanyahu, seen late in the film stoking the flames at a terrifying anti-Oslo rally. Telling Amir's story is the least of it—INCITEMENT works because it never loses sight of the fact that he was a hateful nobody, ignorantly abetting some of the most powerful forces in his society. He's perhaps less than a perpetrator, and also much less than a victim—he knows better than anyone where this dance leads. (2019, 123 min) KAW
Michael Glover Smith's MERCURY IN RETROGRADE (US)
Available to rent via the Gene Siskel Film Center here
I previously praised Michael Glover Smith’s strong debut, COOL APOCALYPSE, for its subtle dissection of relationships in the inflexion point of their collapse. His sophomore feature, MERCURY IN RETROGRADE, builds upon and expands the earlier title’s strengths, presenting a nuanced and troubling portrait of six people who, over the course of a long weekend, quietly and privately reveal that they are in the process of exploding inside. It is a movie about three good-natured, loveable, charming men who each, in his own insidious way, is a manipulative, dehumanizing sexist, and the three spirited, jovial, smart women who have fallen for them. Built in two rough halves, the first part of MERCURY IN RETROGRADE shows us a deceptively idyllic group friendship, three couples who love one another, understand one another, and love being around one another. They eat, drink, joke, play, and seem to grow together as people. Everything feels wrong, but only with the second part in mind do the tension lines in the first become clear. An extended pair of alcohol-fueled conversations, one all-male at the cabin and the other all-female at a nearby bar, are intricately intercut and woven together, cutting away the pretense of kindness, decency, and equality that the characters have worked so hard to convince themselves of. Set almost exclusively in a palatial cabin in the Michigan woods, the movie’s roving compositions, highly mobile camerawork, and idiosyncratic editing keep placing characters in off-putting juxtapositions, dividing spaces, preventing the six principals from ever fully integrating with the natural world they’re surrounded by. Instead, following Smith’s title, they spin around and are trapped by one another like celestial bodies mere moments before collision. The phrase ‘mercury in retrograde’ itself comes from a term of pseudoscientific bullshittery that attempts to explain away misunderstandings and conflict by blaming it on the different orbital speeds of Mercury and Earth, and is a neatly symbolic way of signaling the viewer that the characters will both argue over important issues with one another and both misunderstand the nature of those arguments and be satisfied with papered-over illusions rather than actual resolution. Indeed, the narrative is awash in oddly revealing moments of internalized oppression and violence that are rationalized away as evidence of love: a throw-away comment one woman makes about convincing a partner to ‘let’ her have an abortion; another woman breaking out of a relationship of physical abuse only to pursue her abuser’s career path; a third whose desperate need to keep her history of violent exploitation, victimization, and addiction secret from her partner drives her to break years of sobriety. Many of the actors deserve special acclaim, especially Jack Newell and Alana Arenas, two local actors who play Jack and Golda, the one couple amongst the three to be married, inhabit their complex roles to a chilling degree. It’s one thing to play a dysfunctional couple, but another level entirely to play one that believes itself to be fully equal and loving. It is a trenchant, beautifully and disturbingly stylized look at misogyny and oppression, neither the first nor the last word on the subject by any means, but a modest and welcome addition to the conversation. (2017, 105 min) KB
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On Friday, April 17, at 8pm, there will be an online Q&A featuring director Michael Glover Smith and cast and crew members; visit https://www.siskelfilmcenter.org to access.
SUPPORT LOCAL THEATERS AND SERIES
As we wait for conditions to improve to allow theaters to reopen, consider various ways that you can help support independent film exhibitors in Chicago weather this difficult time. Memberships, gift cards, and/or merchandise are available from the Gene Siskel Film Center, the Music Box Theatre, and Facets. Donations can be made to non-profit venues and organizations like Chicago Filmmakers, the Chicago Film Society, South Side Projections, and many of the film festivals. Online streaming partnerships with distributors are making films available via the Gene Siskel Film Center and the Music Box Theatre, and Facets has its own streaming service (see below).
The Gene Siskel Film Center is one of a number of theaters around the country partnering with film distributors to offer new and recently restored films via streaming, with part of the rental cost going to the theaters. The Film Center from Your Sofa: Stay Connected and Stream with Us series features new titles each week through the end of April.
The Music Box Theatre also has partnered with several distributors to offer streaming of films, with part of the rental cost supporting the theater. Check their website for details.
Facets, too, is doing distributor partnerships, and also has a subscription-based streaming service, FacetsEdge, that includes many exclusive titles.
COVID-19 UPDATES
All independent, alternative, arthouse, grassroots, DIY, and university-based venues and several festivals have suspended operations, closed, or cancelled/postponed events through the end of March at least. Here is the most recent information we have, which we will update as new information becomes available:
Asian Pop-Up Cinema – Spring series postponed till the fall
Beverly Arts Center – Closed through the end of March (tentative)
Block Cinema (Northwestern University) – Spring calendar on hold with no definitive start date
Chicago Film Archives – the CFA’s annual “Media Mixer” event, previously scheduled for May, is postponed until late summer (date TBA)
Chicago Film Society – Remaining March and April screenings on their current calendar are postponed, with intentions to reschedule at future dates
Chicago Filmmakers – All screenings postponed until further notice, with the intention of rescheduling at future dates
Comfort Film (at Comfort Station) – Programming cancelled with no set start date
Conversations at the Edge (at the Gene Siskel Film Center) – Remaining programs cancelled, with plans to reschedule at future times
Doc Films (University of Chicago) – Spring programming cancelled
Facets Cinémathèque – Closed through April 17 (tentative date)
Film Studies Center (University of Chicago) – No April screenings/events; May programming is wait and see
filmfront – Events postponed until further notice
Gene Siskel Film Center – Closed until further notice
Music Box Theatre – Closed until further notice
The Nightingale – March and April programs postponed
The Park Ridge Classic Film Series (at the Park Ridge Public Library) – Screenings cancelled through the end of March at least
Festivals:
The Cinepocalypse film festival (June) – Postponed with plans to reschedule at a future time
The Onion City Experimental Film + Video Festival (March 12-15) - Postponed with plans to reschedule at a future time
The Chicago Latino Film Festival (April 16-30) – Postponed with plans to reschedule at a future time
The Windy City Horrorama festival (April 24-26) – Cancelled; will possibly be rescheduled or reconfigured at a future date
The Chicago Critics Film Festival (May 1-7) – Postponed until further notice
The Chicago Underground Film Festival (June 10-14) – Postponed (tentatively in September)
CINE-LIST: April 17 - April 23, 2020
MANAGING EDITOR // Patrick Friel
ASSOCIATE EDITORS // Ben Sachs, Kathleen Sachs, Kyle A. Westphal
CONTRIBUTORS // Kian Bergstrom, Kyle Cubr, Marilyn Ferdinand, JB Mabe, Raphael Jose Martinez, Scott Pfeiffer, Michael Glover Smith