Films & Schedules - Tuesday, February 23, 2010

When Leila is pardoned after serving 12 years of a life sentence, she agrees to work as an assistant to Father Jacob, answering the letters of those who write asking for his help. Although she regards the pastor’s correspondence as pointless, the letters ultimately play a role in her redemption.

A simple but transcendent story about faith and human frailty, Letters to Father Jacob achieves a state of grace. Surprised when she is pardoned 12 years into a life sentence, hard-bitten killer Leila (Kaarina Hazard) takes the prison warden’s suggestion and winds up at the ramshackle rural parsonage of Father Jacob. The blind elderly man needs an assistant to pursue his main joy in life: answering the letters of those who write to ask for his help. Although Leila regards the pastor’s correspondence as pointless, it ultimately plays a role in her own redemption and heart-rending self-forgiveness.

Filmography: As If I Didn’t Exist (02), Mother of Mine (05), The New Man (07).

This year’s Finnish submission for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar.

85 Minutes    

Interests: Oscar Submissions, Narrative Feature.

Mother is the story of an over protective mothers’ undying love and devotion for her mentally handicapped son.

“Convinced that her son has been wrongly accused of murder, a widow throws herself body and soul into proving his innocence. After his madcap allegorical monster movie The Host, Bong Joon-ho returns with an even more startling genre film. Mother begins as a cartoonish, almost slapstick comedy about a village idiot and his insanely doting, long-widowed parent. Midway through, the movie takes a serious turn as the 27-year-old child is railroaded into prison for the murder of a local school girl; then, in its last third, Mother unexpectedly spirals into a chilling psychological drama, as its unstoppable, devoted maternal protector appoints herself the case’s chief investigator and mutates into a cosmic force of nature, giving perhaps the performance of the year.”—New York Film Festival.

Filmography: Barking Dogs Never Bite (01), Memories of Murder (03), The Host (06).

This year’s South Korean submission for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar.

Sponsored by Oregon Korea Foundation.

129 Minutes    

Interests: Oscar Submissions, Narrative Feature, Asian.

A suspenseful psychological thriller, Chameleon centers on a clever con man who targets lonely, disillusioned women, playing on their romantic fantasies. But can the con man be conned if love gets in the way?

Gábor cleans offices. Working nights, he rarely has any contact with his employers, yet he learns everything about them by thoroughly analyzing their garbage. Nobody suspects that Gábor is in fact a con man who carefully chooses his victims by the trash they leave behind, and usually targets disillusioned, lonely women. In a few months he destroys all their romantic illusions by taking all of their savings. When he gets a job at a psychologist’s office, Gábor meets Hanna, an injured dancer from a wealthy family. Insecure and vulnerable, Hanna seems to be the perfect victim. Gábor pretends to be a doctor who can cure her body and her soul. Everything goes according to plan until Gábor falls in love, and must choose between his beloved and her money. A suspenseful psychological thriller, Chameleon is this year’s Hungarian submission for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar.

Filmography: Just Sex and Nothing Else (05), Children of Glory (06).

104 Minutes    

Interests: Oscar Submissions, Narrative Feature, Comedy.

Before dying, Nora devises a plan to make José, her ex-husband, take care of her funeral during the height of Passover celebration. But despite her meticulousness, she misses something—a mysterious photograph left under the bed which leads to unexpected outcomes.

A divorcée plots to reunite family and friends on the eve of Passover in this affecting, understated comedy set in Mexico City’s close-knit Jewish community. José learns that Nora, the woman he was married to for 30 years and then divorced, has committed suicide. Forced to wait five days for the funeral to allow his son to be present and the rabbi to officiate, José in the meantime discovers that Nora had prepared all of the plans and food for a final Passover Seder. But Nora also left something else: a curious photograph that may unlock the mystery of her life and death for the family she left behind. As curmudgeonly José reluctantly prepares for the funeral, a colorful collection of characters assemble in Nora’s apartment, including disapproving rabbis, a devoted housekeeper, a half-blind aunt, and the couple’s grown son. Winner of Audience Awards at festivals in Morelia, Miami, and Moscow, Chenillo’s warm and witty tale speaks to audiences everywhere.

First Feature Film.

Sponsored by the Consulate of Mexico.

92 Minutes    

Interests: Narrative Feature, Spanish Language, Latino.

This quirky tale pits a scamming hustler and his wrestler sidekick against the inhabitants of a small Uruguayan town.

A combination of quirky dark drama and deadpan satire plays out in this stylish tale of a washed-up wrestler and a smooth conman in a sleepy village in South America. “Prince” Orsini, an impresario, arrives in a small town with his protégé, a one-time German wrestling champion named Jacob Van Oppen. Orsini’s scheme is to use Jacob’s status to lure locals into duels with him, promising a large cash sum to anybody who can pin him in three minutes. In reality, the matches are fixed to protect Jacob’s reputation—and Orsini’s income. The pair’s plan is threatened when an opponent is too drunk to wrestle, and femme fatale Adriana, eying the non-existent $1,000 prize, offers up her muscular husband as the replacement opponent. Jacob, nursing sore muscles, a nasty cough, and an even nastier alcohol habit, is in trouble. “Brechner’s ambitious debut is something like a retro The Wrestler by way of the Coen brothers.”—Variety.

First Feature Film.

This year’s Uruguayan submission for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar.

110 Minutes    

Interests: New Directors, Oscar Submissions, Narrative Feature, Spanish Language, Latino.

The life and career of opera star Mei Lenfeng is the subject of Chen Kaige's opulent period drama which traces Mei from childhood through his career-threatening refusal to perform during the occupation.

Chen Kaige’s opulent period drama tells the story of Mei Lanfang (1894–1961), a Peking opera singer of such virtuosity that his fame spread worldwide and his admirers included Charlie Chaplin and Sergei Eisenstein, who filmed him. Descended from an acting family, Mei was so popular he soon became a rival to veteran actor Swallow 13, and the two faced off in a musical “duel” from which Mei emerged the victor. His fame spread and in the late 1920s he even performed on Broadway. But when disaster struck with the Japanese invasion of Manchuria, Mei’s refusal to sing in public under the occupation proved career threatening. Neatly conveying the fragile social position of opera performers of the early part of the last century, when they were regarded as little better than prostitutes, Chen offers an engaging portrait of Mei’s amazing talent.

Selected Filmography: King of the Children (87), Farewell My Concubine (93), Temptress Moon (96), The Promise (05).

Sponsored by Hotel deLuxe.

147 Minutes    

Interests: Oscar Submissions, Narrative Feature, Asian, History.

81 Minutes    

Interests: Short Cuts.

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HOUSE OF SOUND

DIRECTOR: Vanessa Renwick -

Homage to the House of Sound, a North Portland record store and community anchor razed in 2008.

11 Minutes    

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LAST THROES

DIRECTOR: Sal Strom -

Political undertones are the binding agents in an aural and visual collage.

4 Minutes    

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MISSED ACHES

DIRECTOR: Joanna Priestley -

An ode to the fallibility of spell-check.

4 Minutes    

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SACK LUNCH

DIRECTOR: Sean Whiteman -

A shirtless man in a windowless bathroom talks some sense into the world.

10 Minutes    

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122 RANDOM SECONDS

DIRECTOR: Karl Lind -

A real-time doc that encourages you to “keep Portland weird” and always carry your camera.

2 Minutes    

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THE MOUSE THAT SOARED

DIRECTOR: Kyle Bell -

A famous flying mouse reflects on his humble beginnings in this high-altitude adventure in aerodynamics.

6 Minutes    

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SEAGULLS AND WAVES

DIRECTOR: Brian Libby -

Music by Colleen playfully seasons contemplative footage of the title subjects.

6 Minutes    

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AXIOMS OF A DISHWASHER

DIRECTOR: Vance Malone -

Philosophic musings on the most thankless job in the kitchen.

7 Minutes    

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FAMILY HISTORY

DIRECTOR: Shelley Jordon -

New experience is filtered through perceptions of past experiences.

5 Minutes    

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LAST YEAR

DIRECTOR: Jarratt Taylor -

What feels like a loosely edited home movie evokes the moods, more than the events, of a year in review.

5 Minutes    

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ASCENDING THE GIANTS

DIRECTOR: John Waller -

Charming arborists tackle Oregon’s tallest trees.

12 Minutes    

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DON’T WORRY, IT’S A NEW CENTURY

DIRECTOR: Jeff Guay -

In this wry homage to a seminal Northwest short, a narrator explores the concept of “idea recycling.”

9 Minutes    

This coming-of-age story follows a young Eurasian woman in Taipei as she transitions from high-school athlete to aspiring actress.

“Cheng Yu-Chieh has made a vibrantly alive coming-of-age story, combining contemporary energy with a French New Wave vibe. Young Eurasian high schooler Yang Yang is played by Taiwan’s most popular young indie movie muse Sandrine Pinna, whose half-Taiwanese, half-French looks are integrated into the film’s heart. Yang Yang’s best friend, her half sister Xiao-ru, is a rival both on the track and in their love lives. When Xiao-ru’s boyfriend falls for Yang Yang, jealousies explode in an act of shocking betrayal, changing Yang Yang’s life forever. A friendly manager Ming-ren takes her under his wing and her career as a model/actress takes off, thanks to her mixed ancestry and his tender care and training. Visually and thematically, Yang Yang precisely articulates, via sex, scandal, and heartbreak, that shaky, unstable, exhilarating moment between adolescence and adulthood.”—Vancouver Film Festival.

Filmography: Do Over (06).

112 Minutes    

Interests: Narrative Feature, French Language, Asian.

The story of a supermarket security guard's obsession with a late-shift janitor.

Jara (Horacio Camandule) spends his nights as a security guard on the graveyard shift at a Montevideo supermarket in stoic silence—eating pastries, doing crossword puzzles, and watching the confines of his world go by on a bank of TV monitors. Something stirs in Jara, though, when he catches sight of a cleaning woman (Leonor Svarcas) in the fluorescent glare of the empty supermarket floor. Too shy to speak, he begins following the woman after work, decoding her secrets while continuing to deny his own. Will the gentle giant ever summon the courage to approach her? Set against the dreary background of economic recession and distinguished by Camandule’s heart-wrenching performance, this nearly silent one-way love story—which the director himself considers “a subversion of the classic … romantic comedy”—earned three awards at the 2009 Berlin Film Festival, including the Silver Bear and the Best Debut Film Prizes.

First Feature Film.

84 Minutes    

Interests: Narrative Feature, Spanish Language, Latino.