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Sundance
2001: Day 5
By Paul Fischer in Park City, Utah
Special to iofilm
24/01/2001
Remember
me?
I caught up
today with Aussie actor Guy Pearce, whose acclaimed Memento
(review) has already
had a release in the UK. A highly original thriller, by the way,
all about structure and a man's (loss of) memory. Pearcey was
in top form, telling me he was looking forward to a starring role
in the big studio version of The Time Machine, based on
H.G. Welles' classic about a "Time Traveller" who finds
a beautiful, meek society, the Eloi, who are also suffering from
a kind of collective cultural amnesia. It's to be shot mainly
on location in Los Angeles.
Tilda
as a mother in too deep
I finally
saw The Deep End, directed by Scott McGehee and David Siegel,
a taut, masterfully crafted thriller. In the film, a mother, whose
naval husband is rarely home, struggles to raise her children
alone. Her seventeen-year-old son is testing the waters of the
adult world, and early one morning she wakes to find the dead
body of his gay lover on the beach of their lakeside home. Fiercely
protective of him, she dumps the body in the depths of the lake.
However, dead bodies have a nasty habit of reappearing in cinema
and when this floats back into her life its leads to untold desperation.
Tilda Swinton,
in the lead role, delivers another assured and vivid performance.
She told me that one of her favourite films is the classic Forties
film noir Mildred Pierce, starring Joan Crawford, and this
film comes close to that. Highly atmospheric and beautifully shot
in Nevada's Lake Tahoe.
Eric
Bana to appear in Ridley Scott's new film
Aussie Eric
Bana, was here for the US screening of Chopper (review),
which will open in the US shortly. Bana was telling me about his
role in the new Ridley Scott film, Black Hawk Down, the
true story of the Battle of Mogadishu. On 3rd October 1993 crack
American troops were dropped into Mogadishu to capture Somalian
warlords. What was supposed to be an hour long operation turned
into a 15 hour pitch battle with two American Black Hawk helicopters
being shot down. Bana's role sounds a lot different from his ferocious
and flawless portrayal of the infamous Australian criminal.
Rachel
Ward short
Decided to
check out one of the Shorts programmes, because of actress Rachel
Ward's film which was being screened. It was the last film in
a cluttered program, but there is no denying her talent as a filmmaker.
The Big
House, exec produced by her husband Bryan Brown, is a raw,
energetic drama set in a prison, and tells of the odd relationship
between an illiterate vet prisoner and his younger cellmate, who
teaches the former to read. An often tough, almost neo-realistic
film, Ward's handling of character and narrative is exemplary.
In less than 30 minutes, she was able to give us more character
depth than most two hour features. Her feature career is around
the corner from a remarkable talent.
One
from the Sledgehammer School of Comedy
Unfortunately,
not long after, there was The Wet Hot American Summer,
a film so out of place at Sundance, that it remains a mystery
as to why - or how - the film ended up here. What were the programmers
thinking? Despite a great cast, headed by the comic likes of Janeane
Garofalo and David Hyde Pierce, this unfunny spoof of summer camp
movies is surely going to rank as the worst of the year. It
is trite, stupid and clumsy filmmaking. The script has borrowed
from every bad teen comedy around - hopefully, WHAS will be relegated
to video.
Let's
Get Intimate
From boorish
teen comedy to intellectual human drama in Patrice Chéreau's startling
Intimacy. Every Wednesday afternoon, two people meet at
the man's apartment for two hours of intense sex. There is no
dialogue. Little information about these characters is given.
Only later
are more details divulged: the man, a chief barman in an upscale
London bar, follows the woman and begins to slowly piece together
her life, questioning his own motivations and their unique relationship.
Confrontational
and raw at the beginning, Intimacy develops into a profound and
honest view of the human condition. Featuring truly audacious
performances by Mark Rylance, New Zealander Kerry Fox and the
wonderful Timothy Spall, Chéreau's film is uncompromising, powerful
and very human. While some may find the early sex scenes overly
graphic, they stunningly define the nature of this relationship.
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