Wednesday, April 26, 7 p.m., Castro
Set Me Free (Canada/Switzerland/ Germany, 1999)
Movies can be an escape into fantasy, or a guide for the young and perplexed. They're both for Hanna, a Montreal girl enduring a painfully confusing adolescence. Léa Pool's engaging autobiographical feature, set in 1963, assuredly etches a period in Hanna's life that's chaotic but not traumatic: The heroine's loving but screwed-up parents are her bane as much as her comfort, all men except her brother are pigs, and said brother proves alluring to Hanna's first girlfriend. However, since we sense all along that Hanna will turn out fine -- when a teacher lends her an 8mm camera, voilà! the future filmmaker is revealed -- a certain tension is missing. (Michael Fox)
Saturday, April 29, 9:15 p.m., AMC Kabuki