On Thursday, my last half-day at Sundance, I was able to catch two more films before heading back to Seattle. First up was Zeina Durra’s The Imperialists are Still Alive!, the most glamorous film about terrorism ever made. Asya is a successful visual artist living in a loft on the Upper East Side. She goes to underground venues, Bungalow 8, and art parties, but is also concerned for her safety and civil rights as an Arab woman in post-9/11 America.
In the midst of all the great clothes and stretch limos, she must also deal with the rumored rendition of an ex-lover, missing from his flight to Houston, and Israeli airstrikes on Beirut, where her brother lives. The film is great by way of atmospherics (Manhattan, both high and low–immigrants, dives, jazz bars, Chinatown, diners–all are nicely displayed), but the story is kinda ramshackle, and as with most films, some editing is warranted.
My final film at Sundance this year was Lovers of Hate, which was a nice and nasty surprise from Austin director Bryan Poyser. Chris Doubek is great as bitter loser Rudy, who can’t keep a job and just got dumped by his wife Diana (Heather Kafka). When Rudy’s younger brother Paul (Alex Karpovsky, from Beeswax), a writer of Harry Potter-like books, comes to town, Rudy is insanely jealous–of Paul’s successful career, of the thought that there might be something going on between him and Diana–and so he follows him to his writing enclave, a huge house in Park City.
Paul doesn’t walk right in and introduce himself; instead he hides in the spacious house–and when Diana shows up, it’s even more important for him to stay hidden, while also trying to sabotage anything that may exist between his estranged brother and his ex-wife. And so the cat-and-mouse game between the brothers begins. This is squirm-inducing black comedy that keeps on your toes. It’s disturbing, claustrophobic, and the characters are quite unlikeable, but that’s exactly what I enjoyed about Lovers of Hate. It’s wicked stuff, friends.
And so my fifth year attending Sundance comes to an end. I saw seventeen films in approximately four days (three full days, two half days). I got to meet all kinds of interesting people–a DJ from Barcelona, a TV programmer from Zurich, filmmakers, aspiring filmmakers, the great volunteers working the fest, and just huge film fans. As always, Sundance simultaneously exhausts and energizes me, and as always, the festival makes me feel as if there’s still hope for cinema. Yes, even with The Wolfman coming out soon.