“The Dancer Upstairs” is an adult piece of work, made up mainly of quiet,
emotional scenes and detailed performances. Yet the uniformly measured pace of
the scenes and an overly drawn-out narrative soon hamper the movie’s
effectiveness. There’s never any doubting Malkovich’s directorial intelligence,
but he has a bad case of what Abraham Lincoln called “the slows.”
Spanish actor Javier Bardem plays Agustin, an honest cop who is trying to
find the whereabouts of a terrorist mastermind named Ezequiel (Abel Folk),
whose supporters are becoming increasingly violent. At first, they’re hanging
dead dogs throughout cities, with signs proclaiming the revolution. Later
they’re using schoolgirls to set off bombs and take part in massacres.
In a movie loaded with images of carnage, one is especially unforgettable.
Agustin comes upon one of the little-girl assassins, covered in blood and
barely alive. He wants to help her, and she responds by taking blood from her
mouth and flicking it in his face.
Laura Morante, the lovely Italian actress best known as the mom in “The
Son’s Room,” plays the title character, a children’s dance instructor for whom
the married Agustin develops an affection. In addition to the demented
terrorists, Agustin has to contend with a fascistic military imposing martial
law.
For the audience as well as Agustin, the romance comes as a relief from the
horrors of the political situation. Morante brings to the film a maternal
graciousness, the assurance that sanity and comfort still exist.
Agustin’s spiritual journey is Malkovich’s main concern, and so he switches
back and forth from romance to politics to illuminate it. Unfortunately,
either a more lively hero or a more lively approach was called for, as Agustin
is as brooding and introspective as the film.
.
This film contains graphic violence and sexual situations.
– Mick LaSalle
‘TEN’
Drama. Starring Mania Akbari and Amin Maher. Directed and written by Abbas
Kiarostami. (Not rated. 94 minutes. In Farsi with English subtitles. At the
Opera Plaza and the Shattuck in Berkeley.)
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Movies that focus on conversations between cabdrivers and their passengers
have been done before — most notably by Jim Jarmusch in “Night on Earth” —
but Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami takes this premise to another dimension
with his newest marvel, “Ten.”
A mercurial taxi driver (Mania Akbari) is behind the wheel in every scene.
She’s angry at her ex-husband, whom she divorced. She’s volatile with her
young son (Amin Maher), who is equally on edge with her. She’s philosophical
and inquisitive with riders, all of whom (except for her son) are women. These
are private moments on the streets of Tehran, where every subject is discussed,
including sex and desire.
As the taxi driver, Akbari turns her position into a platform from which
she can rage at the way women are dependent on men (”We don’t know how to live
for ourselves!”), berate Iran’s religion-based legal system and compliment the
way one passenger cuts her hair to cope with her boyfriend’s sudden departure
(”It suits you”).
“Ten,” which takes its title from the number of sequentially ordered scenes,
was filmed with a dashboard camera whose focus rarely leaves the taxi’s front
seat. (One exception: It follows the back of a prostitute who goes from the
cab to a busy intersection. The prostitute’s bantering is one of the movie’s
many highlights.)
A minimalist film, “Ten” looks and feels like a documentary. At the end,
there is no big denouement, but a profound realization that the people we see
on camera are all aching for answers — and struggling to come to terms with
their lives. “Ten” is a rare chance for viewers to eavesdrop on everyday talk
in Tehran that, although fictionalized, must approximate what really happens
in Iran’s busy capital. There is a kind of urban universality here that
hurried people will recognize right away.
– Jonathan Curiel
‘CHARLOTTE SOMETIMES’
Romance. Starring Michael Idemoto, Jacqueline Kim, Eugenia Yuan. Directed by
Eric Byler. Written by Byler and Jeff Liu. (Not rated. R. 88 minutes. At Bay
Area theaters).
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The sexy, surprising romance “Charlotte Sometimes” starts by making an
ingenue out of a burly auto mechanic (Michael Idemoto) and gets more original
from there.
Led by the fetchingly stoic Idemoto, “Charlotte’s” cast is predominately
Asian American — a fact that’s treated as incidental to its story line. Even
more refreshing is filmmaker Eric Byler’s respectful treatment of his young
lead characters.
Most romances about smart, stylish young people like these would force them
into quip-a-minute mode, fearful that audiences weaned on “Friends” won’t
accept a simple, unhurried love story. But “Charlotte’s” characters are
allowed depth and self-awareness, even when they do the foolish things young
people do, like rush into relationships with strangers.
The mechanic spots an alluring newcomer (Jacqueline Kim) at his
neighborhood bar and follows her outside. We know this is a bold act for him
because director Byler, fond of lingering close-ups and minimalist dialogue,
has taken time to establish this guy as self-contained and deliberate. For
instance, he won’t act on a longtime crush on his bubbly neighbor (Eugenia
Yuan) because she has a boyfriend.
Idemoto and Kim make a gorgeous pair, and their early scenes brim with
sexual possibility and emotional danger. Her character plays it close to the
vest, as his does, but her air of mystery seems rather cultivated. You get the
sense this emotionally remote woman could do some serious damage to the poor
guy’s heart. Kim lends her character a thread of self-loathing that suggests
that she knows the tough-girl act is wearing thin.
Seeing them circle each other provides some intrigue but never satisfies
the way Idemoto’s scenes with Yuan do. Blithely exploiting his intense crush
on her, the sunny neighbor prods, teases and even elicits a grin or two from
the serious mechanic.
This film contains raw language, sexual situations.
– Carla Meyer
‘ONLY THE STRONG SURVIVE’
Documentary. Directed by Chris Hegedus and D.A. Pennebaker. (PG-13. 95
minutes. At the Van Ness.)
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The renowned documentarian D.A. Pennebaker legitimized the verite style of
nonfiction filmmaking: Roll the cameras, and the magic will come. “Monterey
Pop,” Dylan’s “Don’t Look Back” and the Clinton campaign-team portrait “The
War Room” (the latter co-directed with his wife and frequent partner, Chris
Hegedus) all captured an abundance of magic.
But Pennebaker and Hegedus also take on plenty of work-for-hire. It’s the
nature of their style — get out of the way and let the story tell itself.
Sometimes the story just lies there like an old cat in the sun.
Entertainment reporter Roger Friedman enlisted the filmmaking couple to
shoot this desultory where-are-they-now road trip, dropping in on some of soul
music’s founding figures, including Sam Moore (of Sam and Dave), Mary Wilson
(of the Supremes), raucous Wilson Pickett and the Stax Records father-daughter
team of Rufus and Carla Thomas. With Friedman, the narrator and emissary,
tossing questions as squishy as Jell-O and heaping praise on the performers
for their unexceptional appearances on the oldies circuit, it’s a wasted
opportunity.
The material was there for the taking. The crew caught Rufus Thomas, the
octogenarian Memphis R&B fixture who billed himself as “the world’s oldest
teenager,” just in time; he died of heart failure shortly after filming, in
December 2001. The camera loves his mischievous facial expressions, the rheumy
eyes and the bulldog mouth. Moore is another piece of work, matter-of-factly
recounting his destitute days selling drugs on the streets of New York and
yawning widely when his wife, Joyce, tells how he eventually kicked the habit.
But the notoriously thorny Wilson gets a pass (Friedman enthuses about how
great her voice sounds, when it clearly does not), as does Pickett, the
onetime star who might have more arrests than album releases in the past few
decades. Jerry Butler, the classy baritone whose biggest hit lends the movie
its title, tells an audience that he wrote his autobiography (also called
“Only the Strong Survive”) because “oftentimes we don’t write our own history,
so it gets screwed up.” Left to this disappointing documentary, these soul
survivors wouldn’t have much history at all.
– James Sullivan ![]()