DCist’s completely subjective and thoroughly uncomprehensive guide to the most feel good, homegrown, fractured fairy tales opening this week.
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Omar Sy and Francois Cluzet (Thierry Valletoux/ Gaumont – Quad)What it is: How to get down if you’re a quadriplegic Frenchman.
Why you want to see it: I first started to think about the variety of cultural appropriation that I like to call get-downism when I saw the 2002 film Snow Dogs, starring Cuba Gooding as a dentist (he whitens teeth, get it?) who goes to white Alaska to meet his white father (James Coburn, in one of his final roles). It’s an embarrassing but fascinating cultural pattern, and “embarrassment” has turned up in at least two reviews of this variation, which is a smash hit in France. The Intouchables threatens to breed Snow Dogs with Scent of a Woman, whose life-affirming spirit in the face of diversity and a blind overacting asshole I hate with all my cinematic heart. But I digress. The movie is based on the true story of an African immigrant hired to take care of a wealthy quadriplegic, and when you see the movie’s real-life counterparts during the end credits, you notice a less sensational racial dynamic: a lighter-skinned North African man. The producers instead cast larger than life Omar Sy, which seems like an insensitive tabloid stunt, but it emphasizes how much the characters refuse to condescend to each other. This is entertainment, not real life, and the script is terribly patronizing, but Sy and François Cluzet have such genuine chemistry that racial dynamics take the back burner to a credible and affecting buddy movie. I know full well the soundtrack’s mix of the funky and the classical is a calculated playlist to make both camps feel good (Nina Simone sings it outright with “Feeling good”). But any French film that runs opening credits over Earth Wind and Fire’s melancholy jam “September” is alright with me.
View the feel-good trailer.
Opens tomorrow at Bethesda Row and Shirlington.
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Silas Gordon BrighamWhat it is: A locally-produced thriller about the sounds in your head.
Why you want to see it: You don’t see any of Washington’s iconic monuments in this locally-produced thriller, and that’s how it should be. Simon (Silas Gordon Brigham) is an indie rock musician/piano teacher working on a new album and a new baby. Suddenly he begins to notice a whistle that nobody else can hear. Silver Spring native Rohit Colin Rao is all over this film, serving as producer and director, screenwriter and music composer as well as editor and cinematographer. Much of this cast and crew had day jobs and shot the film on weekends, but despite the disjointed production history and shoestring budget – it was made for $20,000 with an $800 DSLR, the end product is a decent low-budget mystery.Ultrasonic won Best in Fest at this years’ DC Independent Film Festival, but don’t let it’s self-proclaimed status as “mumblecore thriller” scare you away.
View the trailer.
Opens tomorrow at West End Cinema.
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Faust (Athanor Studio)What they are: Czech animator Jan Švankmajer’s brilliantly unsettling adaptations of classic literature.
Why you want to see them: The wordplay and imagery of Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is so rich that worlds of entertainment dcan be summoned from it’s text as written. But somewhere along the way the children’s classic has had the life adapted out of it, the nadir perhaps coming at the hand of Tim Burton, whose simplistic vision of good vs. evil turned a complex work of art into a call for empowerment. Jan Švankmajer’s first feature film expanded upon the surrealism of his short animated works to build a vivid, disorienting world for an Alice who is part child, part antique doll. Švankmajer also used a mix of animation and live action for his 1994 adaptation of Faust leads the everyman to his fateful choice from the Prague subway to a marionette theater.
View clips from Alice and Faust.
Alice screens Saturday, June 2 at 3:30 pm. Faust screens Sunday, June 3 at 4:00 pm. At the National Gallery of Art. Free.
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Harry Belafonte in Sing Your Song (S2BN Films)What it is: The AFI celebrates Carribbean Heritage Month with the annual film festival, now in its twelfth year.
Why you want to see it:: This year’s Caribbean FilmFest includes documentaries about a West Indies cricket team (Fire in Babylon, June 1 at 7:30), Dominican baseball players (Ballplayer: Pelotero, June 2 at 8:30), a charismatic singer (Calypso Rose:The Lioness of the Jungle, June 1 at 9:45) and entertainer/activist Harry Belafonte (Sing Your Song, June 2 at 6:00). Fiction features include Stones in the Sun (June 2 at 5:00), about Haitian refugees coming together in 1980s New York; Eliza (June 3 at 6:20), about a single mother in Paris; and Ghett’a Life (June 3 at 9:30), a crime drama set on the streets of Kingston that probably has nothing to do with Chris Elliot’s 1990s sit-com, but one can dream.
View the trailer for Ghett’a Life.
June 1-4 at the AFI. See the AFI website for a complete schedule.
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Hum Dono (Sunday, June 3 at 5:30pm)D.C. South Indian Film Festival
What it is: A celebration of South Asian cinema, including films in Hindi, Urdu, Marathi, Bengali, and Telegu.
Why you want to see it: This three-day festival in Rockville squeezes more than two dozen films into its schedule, including documentaries, short films, and recent Bollywood entertainment. Special appearances include workshops with “indie” Indian director Shyam Benegal, and actor Rajit Kapoor, and Q&A sessions with actress/director Deepti Naval and Suneil Anand, son of legendary Bollywood actor Dev Anand. For more Indian movie classics, the Freer continues its Raj Kapoor series this weekend with two of the actor/director’s most celebrated films.
View the trailer for Hum Dono
June 1-2 at The Universities at Shady Grove. 9630 Gudelsky Drive, Building 2. Rockville. For directions, click here.
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Also opening this week, a veritable coming of age-athon: Wes Anderson’s much anticipated Moonrise Kingdom; the Norwegian comedy Turn Me On, Dammit! and Snow White and the Hunstman. We’ll review all three tomorrow.
