Films & Schedules - Comedy

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.

Father and son gangsters freshly released from prison must keep their criminal enterprise afloat while trying to figure out who ratted them out. Was it Bill's wife or their despised family "friend"? Anyone is a suspect in this blackly comic piece of criminal realism.

Ken Loach meets “The Sopranos” might characterize this darkly comic and sometimes disturbing slice of social surrealism in which a family of dysfunctional crooks tries to keep their criminal enterprise from falling apart. As soon as Bill (Bob Hill) and his son Karl (Rob Hill) are released from jail, they try to figure out who ratted them out to the police. Bill’s partner (Julia Deakin) seems like your average housewife, but there’s something about her that suggests she may have had a hand in it. It soon becomes evident that this ordinary terraced house is packed to the rafters with gangsters. Among others, we meet a despised family “friend” (Tony Way), a hit man (Michael Smiley) who takes his toddler along on jobs, Karl’s pregnant girlfriend (Kali Peacock), and a nasty piece of work named Eric (David Schaal). Paranoia reigns supreme in this house, where everyone is suspicious of everyone else.

First Feature Film.

Winner of the Best Feature Prize at Fantastic Fest.

89 Minutes     Digital    

Interests: New Directors, Narrative Feature, Comedy.

Hong Sang-soo's latest wry, comic bulletin from the sex-war centers on a middle-aged man who encounters two married women—and has two very different experiences.

Celebrated art film director Ku Kyung-Nam, invited to a small Korean film festival, runs into old colleague Bu. Invited to dinner, Ku gets drunk, carries on with Bu’s wife, and enrages his friend. A couple of weeks later, Ku meets one of his ex-students, now a famous artist who is surprisingly married to a woman Ku once dated and rejected—a small fact unrevealed to his former student. Ku’s two very different encounters with two very different married women provide a wry, wincing examination of sexual confusion as the oblivious Ku propels himself from one embarrassing situation to another. In true Woody Allen fashion, Sang-soo’s alter-ego offers a comedic take on the pretensions of the world of indy film and filmmakers while deconstructing the paradoxes, ironies, and existential angst of male vanity and insecurity.

Selected Filmography: The Day a Pig Fell into the Well (96), Virgin Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors (00), Woman Is the Future of Man (04), Woman on the Beach (06).

Sponsored by Oregon Korea Foundation.

126 Minutes    

Interests: Narrative Feature, Asian, Comedy.

Loach makes an unexpected leap into romantic comedy in this tale of a lovelorn mailman who receives some unexpected life coaching from Manchester United star Eric Cardona.

Loach and longtime screenwriter/collaborator Paul Laverty shift from their more despondent social-realist meditations to this fanciful romantic comedy, a whimsical, life-affirming nod to the possibility of second chances. Postman Eric Bishop has hit a true low: his two lazy stepsons ignore him, his second marriage is in ruins, a car accident lands him in the hospital—and that’s just the start of his troubles. The lovelorn Eric meanwhile pines for former wife Lily but lacks the confidence to reconnect. While his friends contrive to help him out, often to hilarious effect, the person who finally comes through is another Eric: Manchester United soccer icon Eric Cantona (playing himself), who appears rather unexpectedly in Bishop’s bedroom, offering the sage advice on life and love that Eric needs to turn his life around.

Selected Filmography: Kes (69), Riff-Raff (80), Raining Stones (93), My Name Is Joe (98), The Wind That Shakes the Barley (06).

116 Minutes    

Interests: Narrative Feature, French Language, Comedy.

In this good-hearted film about the trials of caring for the elderly, a middle-aged bachelor who lives with his mother finds himself looking after the mothers and aunts of two acquaintances over a long weekend.

“One of Italy’s leading scriptwriters, 59-year-old Gianni Di Gregorio (screenwriter of Gomorrah), stars in his utterly charming directorial debut as the money-troubled Giovanni, who spends his days caring for his elderly mother in Rome. Giovanni discovers that some of his back rent will be forgotten if he also takes in his landlord’s elderly mother for a few days during the traditional mid-August holiday. But when the landlord arrives, he has both his mother and his aunt in tow. Then Giovanni’s friend Luigi shows up with a similar caretaking request for his own aged mother. Winner of the Venice Film Festival’s Best First Film prize, Mid-August Lunch has a wonderfully loose, almost improvised feel in which Di Gregorio focuses on following the natural rhythms of his houseguests’ interactions with each other rather than on a set storyline.”—Film Society of Lincoln Center.

First Feature Film.

Cultural Partner: Italian Cultural Institute, San Francisco.

75 Minutes    

Interests: Narrative Feature, Comedy.

The Misfortunates examines the unconventional adolescence of thirteen year old Gunther and his dysfunctional family. A bawdy film full of pathos and humor that ponders what it takes to raise a child.

Thirteen-year-old Gunther represents the youngest generation of a line of proud, hard-drinking Strobbe men. Told in flashback from Gunther’s perspective as an unsuccessful writer in his early thirties, van Groeningen’s black comedy ruminates over Gunther’s ribald, chaotic adolescence under the “guidance” of three bawdy uncles, an ever-boozing dad, one put-upon grandmother, and unbounded collective dysfunction. Adapted from an acclaimed novel by Dimitri Verhulst and directed with deftness and verve by van Groeningen, The Misfortunates combines equal amounts of heart, soul, and pathos as it ponders whether, in the absence of other virtues, love is enough to raise a child. “Blackout drinking, compulsive gambling, non-stop whoring, and chronic fighting. Not exactly solid citizen types.”—Hollywood Reporter.

Filmography: Steve + Sky (04), With Friends Like These (07).

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

108 Minutes    

Interests: Oscar Submissions, Narrative Feature, Comedy.

In this sensational comedy, a film composer with writer's block and a pregnant executive enter into an unusual bargain to keep a secret from the exec's conservative mother.

Ezequiel, a nearly broke film music composer, has 20 days to deliver a score. He’s just not hearing it. One day he calls his bank, and listening to muzak while on hold for Paula, an executive he’s never met, he hears a song that inspires a breakthrough. How to find that song again, among the hundreds of inane on-hold muzak tunes? Paula, meanwhile, has not told her very conservative mother that, though she is pregnant, she is no longer with her boyfriend. When mother and composer both wind up in her office, she impulsively introduces Ezequiel as the father. They each have something the other needs, and though they are not even acquaintances, Ezequiel and Paula soon enter into a strange partnership. A witty romantic comedy that has been a sensation in Argentina, Hernán Goldfrid’s breezy film features a stellar cast, including Norma Aleandro, Diego Peretti, and Natalia Oreiro.

First Feature Film.

106 Minutes    

Interests: New Directors, Narrative Feature, Spanish Language, Latino, Comedy, Music.

A suburban family is forced to put their life in perspective and figure out what's worth fighting for in this sensitive, hilarious comedy from the director of Look Both Ways (PIFF 30).

Sarah Watt’s follow-up to her imaginative first film, Look Both Ways (PIFF 30), examines both the comedy and drama of suburban family life in Melbourne, and will resonate with anyone who has endured life’s daily little challenges only to get sideswiped by a massive one. Sacha Horler stars as Natalie, an average housewife dealing with everyday realities and family chaos: never-ending mortgage payments, raucous kids, family celebrations, and an absent-minded husband (Matt Day). Suddenly, fate throws an unexpected curve ball, and Natalie and her family must pull together as one in ways they could never have anticipated. Natalie’s year-long trial ensures that she has little choice but to laugh and cry, often at the same time, as the riches and meaning of a life worth fighting for come into focus.

Filmography: Look Both Ways (05).

Sponsored by KINK.FM.

92 Minutes    

Interests: Narrative Feature, Comedy.

Police, Adjective follows a morally conflicted, undercover cop as he stakes out a young boy accused of selling drugs.

Winner of the Jury Prize (Un Certain Regard) and Critics Prize at the Cannes Film Festival, the latest film from Porumboiu (12:08 East of Bucharest, PIFF 31) starts out with an absurdly comic police sting operation—one designed to catch a lone high school student in the act of selling drugs. Cristi, the cop assigned to the case, realizes the futility of the mission, but his attempts to convince his bureaucratic superiors are met with contempt, derision, and the reminder that it is not his place to question the letter of the law. But letters and laws are very much on Porumboiu’s mind, as the observational style of the film’s first part gives way to an exhilarating verbal joust between cop and police chief about conscience, personal morality, and the true meaning of the things one sees and how one chooses to describe them. “The truth of my character lies in the small things, in his daily routine and in a certain time of being and reacting.”—Corneliu Porumboiu.

Filmography: 12:08 East of Bucharest (06).

Sponsored by Romanian American Society Portland Iasi Sister City Association.

115 Minutes    

Interests: Oscar Submissions, Narrative Feature, Comedy.

Oskar is a devoted family man who, on a whim, decides to cheat on his wife. Thus begins a downward spiral of comedic tragedy that finds him out of a job and in a series of loveless, problematic affairs.

Oskar (Jirí Machácek) is a devoted father, beloved husband, and popular television weatherman. He seems to have it all, but decides that he has fallen out of love with wife Zuzana—mainly because her nose is too big. Oskar cheats on her with the family’s dim Hungarian nanny, his first step on a downward spiral that finds him out of a job and in a series of loveless, problematic affairs. Whatever mid-life quest Oskar is on is not yielding any satisfaction. In the meantime, Zuzana has no problem finding a new partner in divorced single father Matej, aided in no small part by Oskar’s parents. Matej likes her nose just fine. Full of fine details and subtle wit, Hrebejk’s “unromantic” ensemble comedy film skirts tragedy for farce as it explores the mysteries of the male psyche and the tensions between change and stability in a society that manifests both at the same time.

Selected Filmography: Divided We Fall (00), Pupendo (03), Up and Down (04), Beauty in Trouble (06), Teddy Bear (07).

88 Minutes    

Interests: Narrative Feature, Comedy.

Leonidas is a small-town cop who yearns to solve important crimes in the big city. However, with the mysterious death of the town drunk, Leonidas' subsequent investigation reveals that there is more to this sleepy beach community than he first imagined.

Leonidas, a young, ambitious police officer, is assigned to a remote Greek island in the Aegean. He dreams of solving important, big-city crimes, but there are few to be found in the sleepy community where he is reduced to menial chores. Each day at the town café, Leonidas and the locals watch the beautiful Angeliki, the small island’s most famous daughter, as she hosts a popular talk show on national TV. These dull rituals are shattered when the island experiences what appears to be an actual crime: the island drunk, Zacharias, is found dead at the base of a cliff. Jumping at the chance to do some sleuthing, Leonidas soon finds clues that tie the victim to Angeliki, who returns to the island and joins the investigation. As romance blooms between Leonidas and Angeliki, they learn that everyone on the island has their own Zacharias, and their stories play out hilariously in Leonidas’ imagination.

First Feature Film.

84 Minutes    

Interests: New Directors, Narrative Feature, Comedy.

Woman Without Piano is a quietly comic look at a Madrid housewife's attempt to escape from her mundane and tedious existence.

Plain, middle-aged Rosa is a married woman with no friends and no social life. She has devoted her life to her family and doesn’t seem to think much of herself. But when night falls, she enters a fun, dark, and absurd new world. With her husband Francisco tucked in bed, Rosa (Spanish TV superstar Carmen Machi, recently seen in Almodóvar’s Broken Embraces) sneaks out to meet a young Polish construction worker at the bus station, instigating a provocative tour of nocturnal Madrid: neon-lit hotels, all-night bars, and dingy launderettes. Rebollo creates a fascinating, disquieting work in which “anything might happen, and the film—winner of the San Sebastian Film Festival’s Best Director award—holds the viewer in thrall by a chain of extraordinarily staged sequences fueled by a visual command and wit that honors the cinema of Jacques Tati, Otar Iosseliani, and Fellini.”—AFI Fest.

Filmography: Lola (06).

Sponsored by Blue Heron Paper.

95 Minutes    

Interests: Narrative Feature, Spanish Language, Comedy.