Grumblings from the 2001 Los Angeles Film Festival
I know there were good films at the Los Angeles Film Featival but I only saw a couple of them. Most of what I saw were films that were mediocre retreads of old formulas, dark films that had no purpose and films that were just plain imcompetent.
A good number of the films were shot on Digital Video, which is a medium that makes it easier for filmmakers to achieve their dream of making a movie. But it also means that more filmmakers are making bad pictures. At the festival this year good films could be found but you had to be smart enough to realize that the "American Independent" film scene has a little less to offer than it had in the mid-1990Õs. Half of what I saw was passable the other half was not so good, which means I either chose the wrong films or the program notes were so good that they fooled me into believing I was seeing something better.
The festival is now run by IFP/West and they attempted this year to add a little flavor to the festival by having the programmers introduce each film as if each film, individually, were the best film they had seen in years. Ths tactic, of course, set each film up for failure.
The festival has the unfortunate acronym of L.A.F.F. I'm told that IFP insist nobody who deals with the press ever refer to the festival with the word 'laugh" anywhere in the description However,numerous festival reviewers have indeed referred to the festival in just this way. It's something that wouldn't happen if the films were better.
Attraction
Four young twenty-somethings in Los Angeles (led by Matthew Settle and Samantha Morton) are tangled in a web of obsessive love, deceipt and danger (sort of). The relationships are convoluted and messy and far from conventional. Suffice it to say that everyone is using someone else in the film and just maybe too the director is using the audience. The problem is that the relationships arenÕt believable and the whole thing has a sinister quality that adds up to little except atmosphere. Writer / Director Russell DeGraziier, if anything, proves that he is ready for better material. Call this a calling card film.
Brother
Japanese cult director ÔBeatÕ Takeshi comes to America with this film about a yakuza who is assigned to go to Los Angeles stay with his cousin and chill out for a while. Within a day that he arrives he is involved with the drug trade and soon is attempting to buck all the major drug dealers in Southern California. The film is a violent, dead-pan cartoon and proves that Takeshi has not only run out of ideas but that his style doesnÕt translate to well to America.
The Chateau
A couple of inept and amusing American half-brothers Paul Rudd (whoÕs white) and Didier Flamand (whoÕs black) come to Paris believing they have inherited a French countryside chateau. While staying there they stumble through the language, offend everyone within earshot, try to pick up the maid of the house and attempt to sell the chateau out from under everyone who works there when they realize the inheritance is a financial liability. Shot on Digital Video - with a lot of improvisation - the film feels as if it was made on the fly and even though it is at funny for a while it eventually begins to unravel. Part of this is by design but part of it is because there seems to be no script holding it all together and the ending comes fast and fairly unsatisfactorily.
Page Two of LAFF...