For previous Tribeca reports, click here
The Tribeca Film Festival ended on Sunday, May 7. It’s been fun to give Lexi a breather (I hope) from her exhaustive and, I’m sure, exhausting coverage and share my take on a few films and the family festival with you.
[THE MOVIES]
Kiss Me Again (NY Narrative Feature: Romance/Drama)
Writers: J.D. Hoxter, William Tyler Smith
Director: William Tyler Smith
Cast: Jeremy London, Katherine Winnick, Mirelly Taylor, Elisa Donovan, Darrell Hammond
Malika: “Human beings aren’t meant to be monogamous.”
Me: “Duh.”
Brief Summary: Julian (London), a political science professor at a New York university, burns an American flag in front of his class to spark (sorry) a debate, and gets into trouble with his department. He is married to Chalice (Winnick), a beautiful blonde who works as a planned-parenthood counselor. They live with Malika (Donovan), a bisexual, slutty photographer who hates Julian and lusts after Chalice. Malika enjoys threesomes, one of which Jeremy and Chalice separately sneak peeks at through a gap in the door. (Aha!)
Elena (Taylor), a gorgeous, witty and seductive Spanish visiting student in Julian’s class, starts popping into his office. The two soon find much in common, including a mutual desire to bonk each other. Malika secretly shoots a photo of them kissing in the park. All of a sudden, Julian expresses feelings of sexual boredom to Chalice and persuades her to agree to solicit a threesome via a personal ad which yields the predictable gaggle of creeps plus… guess who? Major “play with fire and you get burned” complications ensue, with Malika a gleeful catalyst for the explosive events that precede the final resolution.
My Thoughts: Ever since Steven Soderbergh’s ground-breaking indie, Sex, Lies, and Videotape set the bar for small, intelligent films dealing with marriage, sexuality and voyeurism, few have achieved that level of originality and interest. Here, first-time feature director William Tyler Smith addresses similar themes. Unfortunately for Smith, it isn’t 1989 any more, and his film is but a plodding jaunt over familiar territory.
Jeremy London’s insipid acting doesn’t help. Although he plays the main character, his performance is the weakest. The three female characters—particularly Mirelly Taylor’s Elena, who brings humor, sophistication, and charm to the role—make London’s character seem dull and undeserving of the attention he receives. The flag-burning subplot fizzles, and the sex scenes, which are coy and unrevealing, undermine the evidently intended eroticism of the film. I’m not suggesting that gratuitous nudity is necessarily a good thing, but here some skin and sweat might have added much-needed pizzazz and authenticity. SL&V didn’t have explicit sex scenes either, but it didn’t need them.
Another problem with the film is a lack of consistency in tone. Lighthearted and at times quite funny for the first hour or so, when things get complicated it becomes shrill and mean-spirited, sounding like a high school production of “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf”. I doubt that this film is going anywhere but straight to video, if that.
Sam’s Lake (Midnight: Horror)
Writer/Director: Andrew Christopher Erin
Cast: Fay Masterson, Sandrine Holt, William Gregory Lee, Stephen Bishop, Salvatore Antonio
Brief Summary: Sam (Masterson), a woman in her thirties, invites four fellow workers from the city for a relaxing weekend in the beautiful wilds of northern Ontario, Canada, where she grew up near a beautiful lake that she was named after. The weekend is particularly significant because it is the one year anniversary of her father’s death. Sam is a spiritual sort, with a dreamcatcher—a piece of Native American craftwork shaped like a hoop—hanging over the dashboard of her car. It gives its owner good dreams, she tells her friends.
The group arrives at the cottage they’ll be staying in; Sam grew up there. In town, as they’re gassing up their car, an old man says to them, “It ain’t safe around these parts this time of year.” People have been disappearing, and little scarecrow-like straw figures are left in their place. With a little persuasion from her friends, Sam tells the story of a local boy who, being “odd”, was sent to a home for the mentally disturbed, from which he escapes, goes home and murders his parents. He is never caught. She shows her friends the wooden grave marker for her father in the woods, but it turns out he’s not actually buried there.
Sam makes more new-age comments about her father’s spirit, about being one with nature, calmness and peace. Ultimately she brings up the idea of visiting the house where the murders took place. They do so, and experience a series of bumps and screams in the night. Then one of them discovers a diary kept by the boy-killer. Ironically, it’s dedicated to the memory of his family. The film soon turns violent in totally unexpected ways. Who will survive?
My Thoughts: Supposedly based upon a local legend from the director’s boyhood home in a rural setting similar to that of the film, and inspired by the films of M. Night Shyamalan (The Sixth Sense), Sam’s Lake attempts—according to formula, but with little success—to place ordinary people, including a black male character whose portrayal as a spirit-fearing nature-naïve urban male verges on racial stereotyping, in an unexpectedly terrifying and deadly situation.
The main problem here is that the set-up, which consists of lengthy, dull lakeside conversations interspersed with vaguely irritating spiritual asides from Sam, and the use of unoriginal methods to telegraph impending violence. They combine to make the film an incoherent mishmash of buddy bonding and horror, and the final plot twist feels tacked-on. On the whole, the acting performances are competent, but the script is pedestrian and I experienced little suspense during the film and no carryover afterward.
[FAMILY FESTIVAL REPORT]
On Saturday, May 6, I joined my wife Joan and my boys, Jason, 9, and Nicky, 6, at the Tribeca Family Festival Street Fair. Unlike most New York street fairs, which feature the same sausage sandwich stands and cheap t-shirt vendors and little else, this one truly reflected the diversity and creativity of the Tribeca community, which was devastated by 9/11. It was so crowded we could barely move, but it didn’t matter. After all, people-watching was a basic part of the experience.
And what a varied experience it was! Clowns, face-painting, jugglers, people on stilts, a giant walking Ugly Doll that Nicky couldn’t resist poking to see if there was really someone inside, a mobile Natural History Museum, and an array of restaurants so you could stuff your face every few feet. The boys got to make and fly their own colorful paper kites and joyfully tangle lines with a zillion other kids trying to get airborne. There were also some terrific stage performances. Anthony Rapp, star of the film version of Rent, fronted his band, “AlbinoKid”, and in-between songs gave advice to aspiring actors and actresses in the audience. The USA Shaolin Temple put on a stirring performance blending martial arts and dance.
Our afternoon ended at the Tribeca Grill, co-owned by Robert DeNiro, one of the founders of the Tribeca Film Festival. It’s also where I met Joan. Sadly, what was missing as we looked south down Greenwich Street was the World Trade Center. But still, the Tribeca Film Festival, more varied and vibrant than ever, serves as a reminder that out of disaster can spring economic and creative renewal.
[THAT’S ALL, FOLKS]
Thanks for joining us! Our Tribeca 2006 coverage is complete. We now return to our regularly scheduled programming.
