A Few Days Later ...
(Niki Karimi, Iran)
Iranian director Niki Karimi plays Shahrzad, a thirtysomething Tehranian with plenty on her plate and no desire to deal: Her boyfriend Mahmood's ex-wife has returned to Iran, her disabled son by him must be moved to another facility, and now her father has been hospitalized. She fends off Mahmood's phone messages and reminders of work obligations at her graphic design firm while putting up with a sexist client, boorish cab driver, assorted presumptuous males, and a space-hogging neighbor's SUV. The way she finally deals with this last annoyance is childishly satisfying, but her indecisiveness in every other sphere is never resolved. The result is that the film remains little more than a study of any woman's messy life. If she had some of the joie de vivre of her friend and co-worker Ghazaleh, we might have gotten somewhere besides home to work, work to home, and back again — all with furrowed brow. (F.L.)
Slumming
The 12 Labors
A Few Days Later ...
The Island
Congorama
Bunny Chow
Forever
Private Fears in Public Places
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Forever
(Heddy Honigmann, Netherlands)A graveyard holds much more than marble and statuary in this superb documentary by Dutch director Heddy Honigmann, whose 2004 Dame La Mano depicted the importance of rumba among Cuban exiles. Like that film, this is a celebration of life — this time among the tombstones of famed Parisian cemetery Père-Lachaise. Honigmann queries a Japanese pianist paying tribute to Chopin's tomb, and in halting English the woman conveys intense passion and sorrow where Chopin has intersected her life. We keep returning to women who clean famous graves (Apollinaire, Proust, Ingres, Modigliani) and a docent who's inclined to lead tourists to unvisited graves, like that of a chanson singer who died young. Highlights include a man moved to draw a comic book version of Proust's Recherche, three blind people who sit down to watch Simone Signoret in Les Diaboliques, and an embalmer who talks as he works about preparing dead people for their final appearance before the living. (F.L.)
Bunny Chow
(John Barker, South Africa)
Stand-up comedy is unfortunately scarce in this semi-improvised semi-documentary of three young South African stand-up comics who travel to Oppikoppi, a predominantly white annual rockfest. There's a bit of humor in two of the more experienced performers hectoring a third on his comedic flaws, and all three are having trouble with women in their lives. The funniest moments are a brief montage of hallucinations experienced by Joey, the conflicted Muslim who unintentionally ingests a whole vial of "liquid weed." It seems only right, though, when we arrive at the festival grounds to expect either good music or good stand-up — none of which is in evidence. In fact, the tyro artist is heckled off the stage and receives some useless advice from a man who insists on pissing into the same commode at the same time. Add to that a trio of tired female stereotypes, and it's best to view this one with lowered expectations. (F.L.)
Private Fears in Public Places
(Alain Resnais, France/Italy)
Octogenarian Alain Resnais is admired for his French New Wave films Hiroshima, Mon Amour and Last Year at Marienbad, but he's working in a lighter vein today. This year, he brings us another Alan Ayckbourn stage adaptation (after the 1993 Smoking/No Smoking) with familiar players Pierre Arditi and Sabine Azéma among a cast of six seasoned Parisians looking for a second chance at love. Azéma's character is less a seeker and more a giving sort who, for instance, cares for and feeds a foul-mouthed invalid. At one point in the film, she lends her smitten colleague ostensibly a videotape containing a bland Christian talk show but that reveals something outrageous when he lets the tape run longer. Her enigmatic character is just one strand that entwines with the others like a wistful scarf enfolding the selves we create for our winter years. (F.L.)
To get a listing of showtimes and venues, go to http://fest07.sffs.org
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