2002 - Day 8
My early evening film today set such high new standards for ineptitude in filmmaking that I skipped my last film of the day to get home and get writing before my pain subsided too much, so in reverse order, here goes Day 8:
Then it was off to see one of my favourite actresses, indie diva Tilda Swinton, in a quadruple role as a scientist and her clones in TEKNOLUST, a second feature by University of California at Davis electronic arts professor Lynn Hershman Leeson. Leeson is also a “new media” artist and short film director who has won a bunch of awards you’ve never heard of. After seeing this film I’m convinced that those awards have all come from juries made up of deaf ward patients at the CNIB. I apologize for that, but there’s gotta be some explanation.
Our audience tonight might have given her an award. The majority at the screening seemed to enjoy the film, quite a bit in fact. I tell myself it was because before the film rolled the director told the audience that the film is funny, in case we weren’t sure, or maybe because Tilda Swinton has a cult following that are just so happy to see her on screen it doesn’t matter what else is happening, but mostly I’m scared that the theatre was chock full of the truly clueless. I didn’t realize so many are so lost.
Should I be asking myself if maybe I just didn’t get it? Ummm, nope, I got it, and it was crap. And I’m not totally alone in my assesment. I take comfort in the fact that my friend Scott who also saw it also sat stone-faced through most of it.
So, what didn’t we like?
Well, I’m always leary when a director introduces the film with a suggestion to the audience that they can laugh if they think something might be funny. I don’t need the encouragement personally. Something funny, I laugh. Isn’t that the same for everyone? Why does anyone need that encouragement? Has TEKNOLUST screened to an uneasy silence before? The odd suggestion felt more like a threat. Laugh!
Subsequently as the film rolled, there were certain people that laughed at everything: every line uttered, every movement on screen, would elict this odd, unconvincing and forced a-ha, a-ha, a-ha-ha. It sent chills up my spine as these maniacal sounds suggested that the in-bred were holding a convention and that I might be let out from the theatre into the back alley with them afterwards.
Then there was the material: Swinton plays DNA research scientist Rosetta Stone. She’s been a little overly efficent with her work and not only produced a paper on cloning, but three fully-grown clones of herself as well. All on her own. It could happen, right? The girls live in a secret, ultramodern, underground lair in Stone’s midtown San Fran house, have dataports in their fingernails, and need daily injections of sperm to survive (by syringe, please). Apparently they’re a bit “short on male chromozones”.
The sperm is collected by Ruby, the red attired clone. She mates with men: so that emotional attachments don’t develop, only three times before she’s off to find another willing donor. Olive (likes green) and Marine (dresses in blue) wait at home for their share, but dream about running around in the real world too. Too bad they start sneezing as soon as they leave the nest, poor immune systems and all. (Damn all those fatal flaws with clones!)
Inexpliquably the girls also have, we are told, “the biggest portal on the net”. While guys visit them there, we’re not really sure what they do at the “portal”, but heck, it’s the biggest. So why doesn’t a single trick in the film recognize these famous net babes? And does Leeson think we’ll be more impressed because the girls’ website is “the biggest”? Claims like that only serve to highlight her lack of understanding of the internet.
And the men, the men are all as dumb as posts. A dozen of Ruby’s tricks show up pretty much concurrently at one particular Doctor’s office with a rash and barcode on their forehead and it takes them forever to realize that the cause of the odd rashes is that they’ve all had sex with the same woman. The doctor figures the cause of the barcode rashes is that the men have not just contracted a virus, they’ve contracted a COMPUTER VIRUS. One that can obviously “jump from screen to screen!” The future is here! The future is here!
In the Q&A Leeson was asked if they had any scientific advisors on the film. Lesson said “Yes, lots! They all quit!” No kidding they quit! Too bad B-movie director Ed Wood was no longer available for scientific consultations: he could have sorted things out, he would have enjoyed the screen credit for this dreck.
Tilda Swinton, an otherwise excellent actress, is stuck here playing the three automatons and an idealistic and completely earnest scientist. The clones, devoid of emotion, aren’t a stretch to play, and Stone, the completely earnest scientist isn’t close to being believable. Humans are emotional and have motive for their actions. Swinton’s not allowed to dig for those things here, and I blame Leeson for her lifeless performance.
Another thing: remember crosseyed Karen Black from the AIRPORT films? She shows up here to play a transvestite detective who works while dressed as Karen Black. ? ?? Why is that a good idea? It certainly highlights the total amount of stupidity in the film, in case the viewer hadn’t clued in to just how much of that there is.
I could go on, but in the end TEKNOLUST must be the dumbest look at the ethics of emerging biotechnologies ever slapped together. Leeson’s film doesn’t ask us to think, it warns us to think her way: DNA research will turn us into automatons. Here’s my thought: this woman is a pseudo-intellectual of the first order who will feed you all the garbage you care to swallow. I done had my fill.
Next was 8 FEMMES, an Agatha Christie style murder mystery that takes place in a French country home populated by, you guessed it, 8 women. Its stars include Catherine Deneuve, Isabelle Huppert, Emanuelle Beart, and Fanny Ardant, all favourites of mine. It’s silly, playful, slightly surprising, but mostly slight. It opens before the end of September, and it’s worth a laugh. No stars or director showed for the screening. Tant pis.
First for today was DIVINE INTERVENTION, a very odd Palestinian comedy that unfolds with next to no dialogue, and no plot. It’s one of those “things happen” movies, where we watch daily occurances in corners of Nazareth, Ramallah, and Jerusalem. It is often funny, but understanding many of the film’s points requires more detailed knowledge than I have of the political culture and the obstacles to “normal” life that Palestinians face. Chalk it up to an experience you can only have at the festival.
The last film I saw yesterday was CAVALE. I intended to talk about it today after seeing one of the other two parts of the trilogy to which it belongs, but APRES LA VIE was the film I skipped tonight to type up the TEKNOLUST screed. Therefore…
CAVALE or ON THE RUN by Belgian writer/director/actor Lucas Belvaux tells the story of a political radical who has been jailed in France for nearly two decades for the killing of several people who got in the way of his class struggle. At the beginning of the film he manages a daring prison escape and runs to picturesquely alpine Grenoble, where he resumes his political terrorism and looks to exact revenge on those who gave him up to the cops. Belvaux is good at gradually revealing this guy’s character to us: a blank at first, we first are soon intrigued by his intelligence and mysterious ways, then gradually come to detest him as we build up sympathy for the people he blidly hurts. It’s a pretty decent thriller: you really get to hate this guy and look forward to his comeuppance.
CAVALE also comes with a comedy (LA COUPLE EPATANT) and a melodrama (APRES LA VIE) that interweave plot lines and characters. Minor stories in one part are the main thread of another. I would have liked to have seen the other two: schedule-wise it didn’t work out. If the trilogy as a whole is critically acclaimed and popular in Europe then there’s a chance they will play here one day. After seeing CAVALE I am hopeful they will.
One note: Day 9 won’t appear until Monday next week.
Cheers!
Craig James White
Toronto - show me the movie!