Cannes. Sundance. Telluride. Toronto. Venice. Berlin. Cine-World. Did we lose you there?
OK, Sarasota's Cine-World Film Festival doesn't exactly command the same sort of name recognition as the rest of that short list of the creme de la creme of international film festivals. But for anyone unable or unwilling to shell out the cash, time and energy to jet off to Cannes, it's a surprisingly appealing alternative to any of those aforementioned cinema showcases.
For the past 15 years, Cine-World has been culling the best work from various major film festivals around the globe and presenting the movies on local screens over the course of 10 days, at a dizzying pace that is sometimes too much for even the most dedicated movie nut. This year's Cine-World (held, as always, at Sarasota's Burns Court Cinemas) will feature some 40 films from around the world, many of them making their Florida debuts. As festival veterans will tell you, many of these films will never again be seen outside of their one-time-only Cine-World screening, a fact that makes this event all the more special.
On the other hand, some of these films will go on to become major crossover hits, just as such Cine-World premieres as The Piano, Shine and Sling Blade did in years past. This year, movies like Kinsey, starring Liam Neeson as the groundbreaking sexologist, and Beyond the Sea, a Bobby Darin bio-pic starring Kevin Spacey as the troubled crooner, are already generating massive amounts of buzz. Also booked at this year's festival is The Machinist, a reportedly intense little psychodrama that's been getting some strong press and stars a skeletal Christian Bale. And if none of those floats your boat, waiting in the wings are Pedro Almodovar's Bad Education, a special revival of the original 1954 Gojira (that's Godzilla to you and me), and A Very Long Engagement, the eagerly awaited new offering from Amelie director Jean-Pierre Jeunet.
Among the dozen or so movies I've been able to preview so far from Cine-World '04, the one that probably affected me most deeply was the Russian film The Return (Nov. 9, 3:10 p.m.). It's an austere, elegant and vaguely ominous tale of a father who mysteriously reappears after a 12-year absence and takes his two young sons on what a Hollywood marketing hack might call "a camping trip from Hell." Director Andrey Zvyagintsev creates an icy, elemental poetry by subtracting information rather than by supplying explanation, inviting us to consider the film in a variety of ways, including as an emotional-psychological drama, and even as a mystical parable. There's an almost primal power to this mysterious, beautifully photographed movie, evoking feelings that seem to spring from ancient, dark places, like some half-remembered dream, its meaning just out of reach.
The other film I previewed that might just qualify as a masterpiece is Tarnation (Nov. 5, 10:40 p.m.; Nov. 6, 8:30 p.m.), a documentary so radical it nearly redefines the form. Hypnotic, compulsive, alternately moving and disturbing, and relentlessly honest to the point of recklessness, filmmaker Jonathan Caouette manipulates some two decades' worth of home movies into a semi-experimental collage that offers a self-portrait of pain, loss and (you knew this was coming) redemption. Caouette, whose life is almost too strange and sad to be believed, edited his autobiographical opus on a laptop and made it for a mere $218 — an artistic success story that will almost certainly open some unwelcome floodgates by offering carte blanche to all sorts of less talented filmmakers. Be that as it may, Tarnation is the real thing, and a must-see.
Two other standouts from this year's festival are Caterina in the Big City (Nov. 6, 6 p.m.; Nov. 8, noon) and Unknown Pleasures (Nov. 5, 5:30 p.m.; Nov. 8, 3 p.m.). The former is a witty, albeit somewhat conventionally made coming-of-age tale from Italy about a small-town girl coping with her new life in Rome. At the other end of the spectrum we have Unknown Pleasures, a very unconventional and ultra-minimalist slice of provincial Chinese life from acclaimed auteur Zhang Ke Jin. Zhang's rigorously no-frills anti-style is so successful in evoking the ennui of youth in modern day China that it's bound to leave some audience members wondering what all the fuss is about. Others (like me) will find the movie's uncompromising approach altogether amazing.
I was less impressed with Nicotina (Nov. 9, 12:30 p.m.; Nov. 6, 10:30 p.m.), a Mexican caper-gone-awry flick from the producers of Amores Perros that's a bit too obvious about its desires to emulate the hip, hard-boiled stylistics of the movies of Guy Ritchie and Tarantino. Nicotina offers some amusing moments but is too lightweight and often too gratuitously busy to be taken seriously.
This year's Cine-World will also be presenting a retrospective of the work of acclaimed Swedish director Roy Andersson, including his recent Songs from the Second Floor (Nov. 9, 5 p.m.), a brilliantly orchestrated mishmash of loosely related vignettes that is part macabre art film and part surreal slapstick. The retrospective also includes the director's early and (relatively) traditional teen romance, A Swedish Love Story (Nov. 5, 5:30 p.m.), and Giliap (Nov. 7, 5:40 p.m.), a film that I can't really comment on since the preview tape I was sent was missing its subtitles. Those MIA subtitles were also a problem on my screener tape of Jean-Luc Godard's Notre Musique (Nov. 5, 5 p.m.; Nov. 7, 8:30 p.m.), but I'll go out on a limb here and just say that any new Godard is well worth checking out. Then again, you could say that about nearly anything in this year's Cine-World, so maybe we'll just leave it at that.
The Cine-world International Film Festival, Nov. 5 -15; Burns Court Cinema, 506 Burns Lane, Sarasota. Individual tickets or multiple film passes available by calling 941-364-8662.
lance.goldenberg@weeklyplanet.com or letters@weeklyplanet.com
This article appears in Nov 3-9, 2004.