Dispatches from the Tribeca Film Festival: "Lost. Indulgence" & "Il Deserto Rosso"

Zhang Yibai's "Lost. Indulgence" and Michelangelo Antonioni's "Il Deserto Rosso" (the Red desert) is not an obvious pairing. I was very tempted to pair "Lost. Indulgence" with the recent Jia Zhang Ke film "Still Life" (which was one of my top five movies of last year). Both "Still Life" and "Lost Indulgence" are films made in China seemingly with the blessing of the Chinese Government. But unlike the slew of recent Chinese government sponsored films that star the entire Peoples Liberation Army in period garb fighting in slow motion to unify and glorify China, these films are quiet and often devastating looks at the lives of ordinary Chinese people.

I find it surprising that both these films seem to have made it easily through the notorious Chinese censors. Through these two films we see a China that allows women to be placed into servitude to pay off debts, veterinarian clinics in which workers pay for each death of an animal and the staggering bulldozing pace of change in China.

"Lost. Indulgence" takes place in an factory town, and follows the lives of a family after the father, a taxi driver, drives his cab into the Yangtse river. The mystery surrounding his death and the role that a prostitute, who was riding in the car and who is taken in by the family, had in his death, drive the drama of the entire film. Like in "Still Life" and indeed in real life, do not expect any of the mystery to clear or for characters to rise above their situations. If there is any lesson to be gleaned from these two excellent Chinese films it is that life goes on. Still life is right.

So why then choose another film entirely to pair with "Lost. Indulgence?" Why "Il Deserto Rosso?" Antonioni's "Il Deserto Rosso" is a film about the industrial landscape and its effect on those who reside in it. Antonioni waited to make his first color film and "Il Dessert Rosso is the fruit of that patience. Every color is meticulously chosen: Sulphur yellows pour out of factories, banisters are bright blue. In Antonioni's film the landscape is very much a character, if anything it is the villain, poisoning the landscape and the mind of Monica Vitti (the film would make a great pairing with Todd Haynes' "Safe" in which the environment is the omnipresent villain).


In "Lost. Indulgence" the industrial complex is less of character and more of a stifling backdrop. It is this world that all the characters live in and yet seek to leave. The industrial city allows them to survive (the mother works in the factory and met the father there) but the son seeks a simpler, more idyllic, life. So while the landscape is not overtly a villain it is something to escape from nonetheless. Both films seek to come to terms with changing landscapes. Both films examine the effect of the industrialization of a landscape on ordinary people and their attempts to fit themselves into these quickly changing worlds. The son in "Lost. Indulgence" creates a miniature plaster reproduction of the entire city. He stares at it, trying to take in the entirety of his world and landscape. This vignette mirrors the audience's experience of watching the film: as much as these two films are studies of characters, they are also studies of worlds.

Other films in brief:

Idiots and Angels: George Plympton. I am not really sure that Plympton's work is able to carry a feature length format. Then again it was late, I was tired. I much preferred his short "Guard Dog."

Guest of Cindy Sherman: Paul H-O & Tom Donahue. This is a film made by and about the ex boyfriend of artist Cindy Sherman who found himself completely overshadowed by her and decided to make a film about it. The sad thing was, after the film was over, I wanted to go out and see more Cindy Sherman, and still could not come up with any reason why I should care about her ex-boyfriend.

Dispatches from the Tribeca Film Festival – " Toby Dammit" & "The Beyond"

My first reaction while watching Frederico Fellini's "Toby Dammit" was "oh no I am going to hate this movie." The film (that appeared to share the same makeup team as "Beetlejuice" [double feature?]) is full of seemingly nonsensical images: people with paper mask faces; packs of sunglass wearing nuns; a cardboard chef on the side of the road holding a basket. I felt the need to treat these images as symbols and decode them (what does it all mean ?!?!) and I was all ready to slot the film into the category of: needs to be seen more than once to be understood at all, (not that the "ring"esque little girl as devil would have encouraged future viewings on my part, I am a total wimp when it comes to horror).

As a rule, I am not a fan of films that force the audience to work hard and uncode some "deep hidden meaning (DHM). Good films do gain from repeated viewings but a good film should not need to be repeated. So I was worried that despite how much I love Terrance Stamp, this film was going to disappoint. And yet as the film continued I realized that my initial reaction of frustration and confusion was in fact all part of the grand master Fellini plan.

I once had a dream that my face was being smothered by a pillow and I could not move my head to avoid being suffocated. I tried and tried to turn my head but no matter what, lack of air and panic ensued. This is what the world of Fellini's "Toby Dammit" is like. For much of the film, Dammit is trapped driving around a strange town, unable to find his way back to Rome (turns out not all roads lead there). No matter what he does, he cannot escape.

The frustration that Toby feels is not unlike my initial frustration at trying to decode the film's images. All through the first half of the film I was trying to decipher and keep note of various images and characters in case they were to return later. But that is just what Fellini wants you to do, to try to make sense of that which is nonsense. Like Toby, we are trying to find roads where there are none. The nuns, the chef, these are all red herrings. Fellini has created an unsolvable maze for the viewer that mirrors the maze that Toby tries to navigate. So in a way, we feel what Toby feels.

(note: Spoilers Ahead) In "The Beyond," Lucio Fulci does not try to bait us with red herrings to get us to feel boxed in, and yet the world he creates is eerily similar in feel to the world that Toby is trapped in. Fulci, through the narrative, simply shows us the horrors of the place ( a hotel that is actually a gate to the underworld oh no!). He is telling a story in a more traditional way in comparison to Fellini. The hell that he shows us is a world in which no matter where you turn, you are faced with the same view. The protagonists find themselves surrounded on all sides by the same painting never to see or find an escape ever again. This place is a hell that battles the world of "Toby Dammit" for the title of worst and most inescapable prison on earth. Even though Fulci simply tells us the story and does not provide us with the "feel" of the place, can we say that this place is any less scary? These are two similar situations, presented very differently in terms of filmic style by two different directors, that end up, perhaps, not so far from each other in the end (both have me hiding under bed covers).


Other Tribeca screenings In brief:

"Night Tide"/ "Picnic" (Curtis Harrington) - Surprise visit from Dennis Hopper! Pity that they got the reels in the wrong order (!!!). I was distracted.

"Three Kingdoms" - (Daniel Lee) All over the place. Should have picked one kingdom.