SIFF Dispatch: Mid-Week Two

Here we are at the exact midpoint of the marathon Seattle International Film Festival. Is everyone still in this to win it? Before you dash off to your next screening, be sure to check the SIFF updates page to see which films are already sold out or are selling fast. Individual tickets for most films cost $11 for the public and $9 for SIFF members. Matinees are a bit cheaper ($8/$7) and those who are more willing to commit can consider all sorts of passes still for sale as well as slightly discounted packs of tickets in bundles of 6 or 20.

With that in mind, let’s take a look at the SIFF films that those of us at The SunBreak saw so far this week as well as the films that we’re most looking forward to seeing over the next couple days. Note that the festival expands into Kirkland this week with a gala presentation of Bon Appetit (party at 6:30, film at 8:00 pm.) and celebrates the music of last year’s big SIFF hit, Winter’s Bone, with a live performance of its rustic score at the Triple Door (7:30 pm).

WHAT WE SAW:

MvB hopes you saw Bibliothèque Pascal already, because its festival screenings are past. Hungarian director-writer-actor Szabolcs Hajdu has created an exuberant work of cinema that somehow connects Ken Loach with Fellini–it’s at once a fable about the sex trafficking of Central European women, a profound critique of the use of story, and a picaresque exploration of “getting by” in Romania. Moments of visual delirium jostle with its unprejudiced perspectives on its all-too-human characters. Accept its leisurely pace, and you’ll be rewarded.

The Names of Love is actually even better than its screwball set-up suggests. Baya is an Algerian-French leftist who has decided to seduce right-wingers into gaucherie, realizing that rational argument gets you nowhere. But screenwriter team Michel Leclerc and Baya Kasmi find troubling real-world antecedents for Baya and her Jospiniste love, Arthur Martin, and use a stinging comedy to probe the old wounds that still disturb new France. (June 3 ,1:30 p.m. @ Pacific Place)

Seth: Surrogate Valentine isn’t unwatchable, it’s just unsatisfying. You leave the theater thinking that your time would’ve been better spent if, instead of surrounding singer/songwriter/actor Goh Nakamura with preposterous characters and a half-baked story, the makers of the film had just filmed him playing his Beatles-inspired folk rock tunes. The tunes are great, and the scenes that contain them the best in the movie. There is some good stuff in the script, but you wish they’d saved it until they came up with a story and characters that weren’t so ridiculous. No blame to the actors, who do a uniformly excellent job. They just don’t have much to chew on.

Audrey delved into two very different documentaries. Shut Up Little Man! is a look at how recordings of crazy San Francisco neighbors went viral before “going viral” had been invented by the internet. Of course, things are never that simple, especially when you get into competing movie projects and arguments over who owns the intellectual property rights to audio tracks. Meanwhile, things get equally complicated in Marathon Boy, an HBO documentary following the wunderkind child runner in India over his battles with his families (both biological and adopted), his body, and the government over his right to run long distances. Is it nurturing a child’s natural talent to make a three-year-old run dozens of miles at a time? Or is it yet another form of child labor in India, a country well known for its exploitation of children? There’s a lot of issues at play, and while the documentary runs long (98 minutes) to do so, you end up wishing that some of the material had been split out into a separate film or miniseries. (June 5, 7 p.m. @ SIFF Cinema; June 8, 4:30 p.m. @ the Egyptian)

FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION:

Wednesday, June 1

• Lesson Plan documents the story of a 1967 teaching experiment that brought fascism to Palo Alto. (4:30 p.m. @ Harvard Exit)
• Vampire finds an emo bloodsucker getting his fix by meeting depressed girls from the internet and teaming up on one-sided suicide pacts. (6:30 p.m. @ Egyptian; also June 2, 4:00 p.m. @ Egyptian; June 5, 8:30 p.m. @ Admiral)
• Saigon Electric dance battle mania and cheeseball teenage romance in a cross-sectional look at teen culture and hip-hop competitions in Vietnam redeemed by Stephane Gauger’s kinetic, highly stylized dance scenes. (6:30 p.m. @ Everett)
• Simple Simon Sweden’s top Asperger’s comedy. (7:00 p.m. @ SIFF Cinema),
• Karate-Robo Zaborgar Tony loved Robo-Geisha director Noboru Iguchi’s latest over-the-top riff on the Japanese live-action TV that thrilled the midnight masses last weekend. (9:30 p.m. @ the Neptune)
• Gainsbourg: A Heroic Life chronicles the life and times of France’s most important sexy singer songwriter from the Nazi-occupied streets to glamorous liaisons with Brigitte Bardot. (9:30 p.m. @ Egyptian; also June 3, 4:00 p.m. @ Admiral; June 7, 8:30 p.m. @ Kirkland)

Thursday, June 2

• The Last Mountain as if things aren’t tough enough in the Appalachian Mountains, residents also have to deal with a “federally-sanctioned” apocalypse as mountains are exploded to access the coal within. (4:00 p.m. @ Pacific Place)
• Amador Spanglish meets Weekend At Bernie’s? In this contemplative film an immigrant maid takes a job caring for a dying man, but forgets to tell his family when he dies. (6:30 p.m. @ Pacific Place; also June 4, 1:30 p.m. @ Pacific Place)
• The Importance of Being Earnest was filmed LIVE on Broadway in high definition; now you can reduce your carbon footprint by watch it in a movie theater. Note, tickets for these screenings are more expensive and entry isn’t included with most SIFF passes. (7:00 p.m.; also June 5, 1:30 p.m.; June 12, 6:00 p.m., all @ SIFF Cinema)
• Love Affair with the Big Man girl goes into the woods, falls in love with a telepathic Sasquatch. You know, just normal nature stuff. (9:00 pm @ Everett; also: June 10, 6:30 pm & June 11, 4:30 p.m. @ SIFF Cinema)
• Spark of Being tells Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein story experimentally with found bits of archival film and a new jazz soundtrack from Dave Douglas. (9:30 p.m.; also June 3, 5:00 p.m. @ Harvard Exit)
• Magic Trip: Ken Kesey’s Search for a Cool Place all of the magic schoolbus, none of the LSD in your popcorn. (9:30 p.m. @ Egyptian; June 4, 3:15 p.m. @ Egyptian)
• Norman finds an unhappy outcast kid claiming his father’s terminal cancer as his own ailment as a way of gaining sympathy among his classmates, earning friends, and charming a cute girl. A soundtrack from Andrew Bird and a performance from Richard Jenkins as the dying dad lead me to believe that all of these deceptive shenanigans won’t just be zany good times, but might also include some melancholy and life lessons. (10:00 p.m. @ SIFF Cinema; June 4, 1:00 p.m. @ Neptune)