Katterskill Falls
A married couple drives to Upper State New York for a long weekend at a rented cabin and along the way they pick up a hitchhiker in this Knife in The Water rip-off. Eventually the hitchhiker (who represents everything the woman’s husband is not) is spending his days and nights with them and then…well just guess what happens. Not only is the film -- directed by Josh Apter and Peter Olson -- completely derivative at every turn but it is so obvious and hackneyed that it would make a mediocre TV movie. The only change from the basic structure of Polanski’s film is the ending, which is so far fetched that during the question and answer period one woman said to the directors, "I think your movie could have been saved if it weren’t for that ending." Somehow the directors convinced themselves it was the right ending. And somehow they convinced the jury too because the film won the best film award at the festival.
Kissing Jessica Stein
This winsome film, by Charles Herman-Wurmfeld, won the audience award and it’s easy to see why. It has no pretensions to being anything other than a good comedy about a single woman who finds the perfect mate through a personal ad. Jessica (Jennifer Westfeldt), a neurotic New Yorker, decides that the perfect mate for her will be another woman and thus starts a serious of serio-comic adventures of two women in love. Although the film is only ostensibly similar to Happy Texas it has the same buoyant quality
Maelstom
This second feature by French Canadian director Denis Villeneuve (whose last film August 32nd on Earth was an original) proves that he is a director with talent to burn. The film is about the trials and tribulations of Bibi (Marie-Josee Croze) a single woman who is having a really bad week. On the same day that she gets an abortion she does a hit and run on an old man crossing the street. Her life spirals out of control to the point that she seems to have no hope left. The film is dark both in it’s subject matter and in the way it is shot but it also has a whimsical fairy tale quality to it and rounds itself out with a somewhat romantic ending. And, just to add a distinctive fascination to the film the director uses a talking fish to narrate everything.
Seven and a Match
This film by written and directed by Derek Simonds is very similar to The Big Chill in that it involves a group of old college friends who get together for one last reunion at a summerhouse in Maine. The difference is that they propose to burn down the house – since it is about to be lost in a foreclosure. Over a long weekend they work out their differences, deal with their problems, drink, laugh, have sex, cry and eventually forgive one another. Considering that it is by-the-numbers cinema it has a lasting effect due to the great performances and the quality script. The film has a great young cast of up and coming actors including, Tina Holmes the earthy and amicable woman who instigates the weekend
reunion, Heather Donohue (of The Blair Witch Project) who plays a cynical woman in the guise of Kathleen Turner, Eion Bailey an out of work actor who manages to
have a sexual encounter with almost everyone, Petra Right who’s the laconic upper class blond and—best of all-- Adam Scott who’s the easy going gay writer.
The Sleepy Time Gal
One of the better films at the festival if only because it is so well accomplished and directed. Director Chrostopher Munch has really come into his own with this wise, witty, heartfelt film about a woman (played by Jacqueline Bisset) who tries to reconcile the relationships in her life before she dies. Bisset has never been better and the supporting cast of Martha Plimpton, Nick Stahl, Amy Madigan and Seymour Cassel. The film only falters in the final minutes when it insists on giving us teeth gritting death bed scene. Considering that so many films at the festival were shot on DV this one – shot on film – was easily one the bestlooking films in the festival.