For the record: waking on January mornings, on very little sleep, with the rays of Park City sun, mountain air in your lungs and pure white snow as one of the first overwhelming sights when you step outside, heading on your way to a morning screening or a slope, is unquestionably one of the best things in life. Instant energy, inspiration, drive, immersion in serendipitous Sundance makings is your engine for all of the festival days. Now, onto to the cinematic highlights. By the time you landed on my obscure, hidden blog, you would have already read or experienced the buzz: sex, politics and almost an equal number of women film directors. Three (“Before Midnight”, “Crystal Fairy”, “Look of Love”) out of the six movies viewed (yes, only six, very hungry for more) had explicit nudity. Many more contain flesh, such as Daniel Radcliffe’s much talked about sex scene in “Kill Your Darlings” , “Lovelace” which showcases the story of a porn star, James Franco’s “Interior. Leather Bar.” on the sexually explicit, gay and S&M film as well as another Franco film “Kink” about sex, submission and pornographic business, “Two Mothers” about forbidden, morally questionable attractions, a secret affair in “A Teacher”, and of course, Sundance’s most buzzed films “Don John’s Addiction” and the list goes on.
BEFORE MIDNIGHT (RICHARD LINKLATER)
Enough of sex, onto love. “Before Midnight”, one of the most anticipated festival screenings, marked the return of the Sundance festival darling, Richard Linklater, almost twenty years later after the world-wide success of “Before Sunrise” (premiered in 1995), followed by the “Before Sunset” sequel. Linklater, Hawke and Delpy live up to impossible expectations in “Before Midnight”. And they deliver absolute perfection, the one you could not even imagine as perfection, but once you see it, you know it. A world premiere that was 18 years in the making, embodying the richness, charms and difficulty of keeping the spark in long-term committed romantic relations. We meet Celine and Jesse on a late summer day in Greece, both in their 40s, pondering the eternal questions of lifelong love and the difficulty in preserving it in the way it originated amidst the avalanche of obligations, expectations, life complications, disappointments and pasts that come in the way. Humor, naturalism, honesty, argumentative climax, lightness, heaviness, Greek sun, identity, the complexity and simplicity of true longlasting love that permeates all generations. In the Q&A session of the world premiere, Linklater emphasized the naturalism that graces each scene of the film, a reflection of the natural symbiotic artistic bond between what he calls now a “middle-aged threesome couple” – Linklater, Deply and Hawke, who jointly wrote and re-wrote and tweaked each line in the screenplay. Delpy adds: “Weirdly enough, we rehearse a lot and when we see that a sentence doesn’t feel natural the way it was written, we rewrite it to feel natural like the speaking way of talking.” Best Original Screenplay of the year (and beyond).
CIRCLES (SRDJAN GOLUBOVIC)
Tracing the lifelong guilt and grief triggered by one act of heroism in war-torn Bosnia in 1993, where a Serbian soldier (Marko) loses his life while saving the life of a Bosnian shopkeeper. Twelve years after the tragic incident, “Circles” questions the ripple effects that can be provoked by the good and the bad. The closed or open circles that define an individual’s life. The war wounds remain, but each survivor has a choice of living with revenge and debilitating grief or redemption and reconciliation.
Note (Award update): winner of the World Cinema Dramatic Special Jury Award (along with “Pussy Riot” for the World Documentary section of the award).
LOOK OF LOVE (MICHAEL WINTERBOTTOM)
Masterfully chronicling the scandalous and erotic life and career of Paul Raymond, Britain’s pioneer and king of “gentlemen’s clubs” and later on, owner of an empire of clubs and erotic magazines (as well as ample real estate). A nightlife treat for the eyes (and be ready to be awed by the beauty of Fiona, the character that plays Paul Raymond’s second or third most important woman in his life. The first being his daughter, the anchor of the film).
THE SQUARE (JEHANE NOUJAIM)
As the unrests, clashes and deaths and injuries of innocent civilians in Egypt continue even as of today, Noujaim’s documentary “The Square” (Al Midan), represents an even more timely and urgent chronicle of the revolution and the hardships and bravery of revolutionaries fighting for a better Egypt for now more than 2 years. Tahrir Square is the epicenter of the documentary, emanating hope, power of youthful idealism and revolutionary spirit as the fall of Mubarak is documented, but then changing its nature as the disappointments of the transitional period start to emerge. Khalid Abdalla (who was also present at the screening), embodies the revolutionary spirit, with the documented portrayal of an untiring fight for political change and reform.
Note (Award update): winner of the World Cinema Documentary Audience Award – truly deserving award (the world premiere screenings in Park City received standing ovations).
CRYSTAL FAIRY (SEBASTIAN SILVA)
Take note of a director-actor partnership – Michael Cera, the film's star and Sebastian Silva, the Chilean director, are debuting two films at this year’s Sundance Festival (“Crystal Fairy” and “Magic Magic”). Crystal Fairy is a road trip movie, following a group of friends (three very handsome Chileans and an American) driving around Chile, in search of the San Pedro cactus with hallucinogenic properties, with the sole goal of ultimately living the mescaline experience together once they reach a beach destination. Along the way, or better said, at the beginning of the trip, an accidentally invited hippie very nude female joins them (Crystal Fairy aka Hairy Fairy mid-way through the trip). Free-spirited search for life’s natural highs.
Note (Award update): winner of the Directing Award – World Cinema Dramatic
Honorable mention: The Machine Which Makes Everything Disappear – A Georgian gem showcasing individual vignettes in the form of an interview audition that becomes much more than that; Pussy Riot – A Punk Prayer – because the revolutionary movement was too important not to document.
Unhonorable mention: The Meteor – note to self and caution to festivalgoers - read the film synopsis VERY CAREFULLY if it is part of the “New Frontier”. Without warning, the film was a compilation of one of the most depressing voiceovers and stories, dialogue-less and potentially conducive to a collective suicide by its first audience. Yes, there were some impressive images on screen (waterfalls and amateurish Terrence Malick-esque presentation of natural beauty), but that didn’t compensate for the uninvited depressive abstractionism.
Watchlist (hoping the release dates are very soon):
Don Jon’s Addiction, Running from Crazy, Lovelace, Kill Your Darlings, jObs, Two Mothers, Afternoon Delight, Ain’t Them Bodies Saints, Big Sur, Breathe In, The East, The Necessary Death of Charlie Countryman, Very Good Girls, The Way, Way Back, The Crash Reel, Pandora’s Promise, We Steal Secrets: The Story of Wikileaks, Concussion, Emanuel and the Truth About Fishes, The Spectacular Now, Manhunt, Lasting.
