My friend Skye Sepp brought this film to my atten­tion. I’ve been burnt a few times by movies star­ring Bill Mur­ray. But he is per­fect in this one. The film is a char­ac­ter com­e­dy. It isn’t a “roman­tic com­e­dy”, since there is no suc­cess­ful roman­tic res­o­lu­tion. It has a very con­tem­po­rary feel­ing. The char­ac­ters and set­ting are def­i­nite­ly now — that is, the Unit­ed States as it real­ly is in 2005, and not some behind-the-times fac­sim­i­le gen­er­at­ed by writ­ers and film-mak­ers who have lost touch with the cul­ture. Jim Jar­musch wrote and direct­ed the film, and it’s obvi­ous that he keeps his eyes and ears open, and knows his own soci­ety. Any Amer­i­can who knows how to use Ethiopi­an pop music in a film, in a way that shows a lit­tle respect, plain­ly has his fin­ger on the pulse.

(Arm­strong 1999) Mid­Somer Mur­ders: Ep.9 — Blood Will Out
(L’E­cuy­er 2004) Prom Queen
(Gau­dreault 2003) Mam­bo Italiano
(Asquith 1952) The Impor­tance of Being Earnest
(Ratush­ni­ak 2004) Iron Men, Wood­en Ladders
(Hitch­cock 1955) To Catch a Thief
(Asquith 1948) The Winslow Boy
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This is a good film. It’s based on a nov­el by Andre Dubus III, which I haven’t read*. It was the first fea­ture film of Cana­di­an direc­tor Vadim Perel­man, who had made a rep­u­ta­tion with music videos and com­mer­cials. Appar­ent­ly, nov­el­ist and direc­tor worked togeth­er inti­mate­ly. The cast, Jen­nifer Con­nel­ly, Ben Kings­ley, Shohreh Agh­dashloo, Ron Eldard, Frances Fish­er, Kim Dick­ens, and Jonathan Ahd­out, find every sub­tle­ty pos­si­ble in the char­ac­ters. This was pos­si­ble because the char­ac­ters are well con­ceived, mul­ti-dimen­sion­al, and real. The sto­ry is pure Shake­speare. Two peo­ple have equal­ly just claims to own­ing a house. Noth­ing spe­cial, just an ordi­nary lit­tle house with a view of the sea. One is an Iran­ian immi­grant, played to per­fec­tion by Ben Kings­ley, who des­per­ate­ly needs the house to hold his fam­i­ly togeth­er and retain his much injured pride. The oth­er is a lone­ly woman who has both iso­lat­ed her­self and been iso­lat­ed, and in the course of the strug­gle earned the love of a psy­cho­log­i­cal­ly frag­ile cop. What begins as a low-key dis­pute grad­u­al­ly builds in ten­sion and com­plex­i­ty, and unfolds with the inex­orable steps to tragedy that Shake­speare per­fect­ed, and few drama­tists since have learned. 

*[I read it the next month]

My friend Isaac and I howled with laugh­ter through­out this long and absurd film. Chil­dren in a small town are men­aced by evil cos­mic forces in the form of a leer­ing clown, played by Tim Cur­ry. When they grow up, they have to do it all over again. The cos­mic forces, appar­ent­ly, can be defeat­ed by group hugs.

I’ve been read­ing some of Ian Rank­in’s fine hard­boiled detec­tive nov­els, and this BBC tele­vi­sion adap­ta­tion is a fair ren­der­ing of them. The inno­v­a­tive cam­era work turns the alleys and hous­ing projects of Edin­burgh into an expres­sion­ist nether-world. The main char­ac­ter, inspec­tor Rebus (ably played by John Han­nah), is rep­re­sent­ed a bit younger, and the musi­cal ref­er­ences that fill the books are only giv­en an occa­sion­al nod. But watch­ing the drama­ti­za­tions will not spoil the books for you. They are not “who-done-its” near­ly as much as “why-done-its”.

Two recent Cana­di­an movies about gay issues. One is a docu-dra­ma about the 2002 Char­ter of Rights court chal­lenge made by Mark Hall, a high school stu­dent who was for­bid­den to take his male date to the prom at a Catholic school. On the whole, this is done with a light touch, treat­ing it as a roman­tic com­e­dy, rather than instruc­tive melo­dra­ma. The court case was pret­ty much a for­gone con­clu­sion (the Cana­di­an Char­ter of Rights is pret­ty damn clear on the mat­ter), and the boy’s par­ents and school mates were on his side. The school author­i­ties mere­ly looked fool­ish to everyone. 

Mam­bo Ital­iano, is intend­ed as an off­beat com­e­dy, but it has some gen­uine­ly mov­ing dra­mat­ic scenes. It’s done in a style rem­i­nis­cent of the TV show Arrest­ed Devel­op­ment, mixed with a bit of My Big Fat Greek Wed­ding. Ange­lo (Luke Kir­by) has two prob­lems. A small one: he’s gay, in the clos­et, and romanc­ing a cop. A big one: his fam­i­ly is Ital­ian. Specif­i­cal­ly, his fam­i­ly is part of that intense sub­cul­ture of Mon­tre­al’s la petite Ital­ie. (“When I came to this coun­try, nobody told me there were two Amer­i­c­as, the real one, Amer­i­ca, and a fake one, Cana­da. And then they did­n’t tell me there were two Canadas, the real one, Ontario, and the fake one, Que­bec!”). The Ital­ian-Cana­di­an com­e­dy is paint­ed in broad, exag­ger­at­ed strokes, but the whole sto­ry is done in such a way as to demon­strate the fun­da­men­tal absur­di­ty of all the hero’s prob­lems. With­in the car­toon frame­work, there are many scenes that ring true. It’s more about the stress of being a ping-pong ball among fam­i­ly mem­bers and com­mu­ni­ty pres­sures than about the prob­lems of com­ing out. His cop boyfriend, believ­ably, caves in to fam­i­ly pres­sure and mar­ries a “nice Ital­ian girl”, an out­come made cer­tain when you look back at his cow­ard­ly behav­iour when he was in high school. There are moments in the film that are gen­uine­ly hilar­i­ous, not because of the absur­dist joke-style of the film, but because they are bit­ter reality.