Photos by Enrique Goded (top) Xiao (center)
Year after year, the prospects get brighter for festivalgoers in Los Angeles, with the American Film Institute and the Independent Film Project’s Los Angeles Film Festival vying (in a friendly way, of course) for recognition as the L.A. showcase for domestic and international independents. (Meanwhile, numerous special-interest festivals — Outfest, the Pan-African Film Festival, the Visual Communication (VC) Festival of Asian-Pacific Film, et al. — work hard each year to keep their own profiles up.) For 2004, the AFI Fest lineup, from opening through closing galas, boasts 136 films from 42 countries, including 24 world premieres, 11 North American premieres and 28 U.S. premieres. The film staff at L.A. Weeklymanaged to see a bunch of them, and here’s what’s up. For tickets and information, call (866) AFI-FEST (231-3378), visit the AFI box office at the ArcLight Hollywood, 6360 Sunset Blvd. (open 11 a.m.-7 p.m.), or visit their site.
*SYMMETRY(Poland)
Unfolding with the intense dread and darkness of a Dostoyevsky novel, this tale of a man wrongly imprisoned showcases a fascinating character arc. Meek, educated, 20-something Lukasz finds himself at the mercy of both sadistic guards and an inmate hierarchy whose violence and complex codes he has to master or fall victim to. Writer-director Konrad Niewolski does a fine job capturing the gradual shifts in Lukasz, from his struggle to protect himself to the pride he eventually feels in being accepted by the dregs of society. Then, when freedom is just within his reach, Lukasz is forced to choose which world he really belongs to. (ArcLight 11, Fri., Nov. 5, 7 p.m.; Sat., Nov. 6, 2:30 p.m.) (Ernest Hardy)
*THE WOODSMAN(USA)
Kevin Bacon gives a startling, grimly intense performance as a recently paroled pedophile readjusting to life on the outside in this risky and thoroughly impressive debut feature. Director Nicole Kassell pulls no punches in her depiction of social attitudes toward sex offenders, but what is most remarkable (and unsettling) is the way she leads us to see the world through her protagonist’s eyes and to feel his gnawing, paralyzing fear of succumbing, at any moment, to familiar temptations. With excellent support from Kyra Sedgwick (as Bacon’s co-worker and love interest), Mos Def (as a dogged detective) and the extraordinary child actress Hannah Pilkes (as a precocious young girl in a red riding hood). (ArcLight 10, Fri., Nov. 5, 7 p.m.) (Scott Foundas)
DÍAS DE SANTIAGO (Peru)
Santiago (Pietro Sibille) is a ticking bomb, a young soldier released from the anti-terrorism campaigns of Peru’s military onto streets of poverty and neglect. With more than a passing resemblance to Taxi Driver’s Travis Bickle — Santiago holds a dialogue with himself that combines De Niro’s “You talking to me?” soliloquy with the “This is this” speech from The Deer Hunter— the bullet-headed young man seems destined for explosive violence. But writer-director Josue Mendez undermines Sibille’s fierce performance with arbitrary technique, including distracting jumps from color to black-and-white. By the end, as he pours depravity upon depravity, Mendez’s vision comes undone. (ArcLight 13, Fri., Nov. 5, 7:15 p.m.; Sat., Nov. 6, 3 p.m.) (Jon Strickland)
*HEAD ON (Germany)
Fatih Akin’s alternately cheerful and forlorn portrait of a Hamburg punk rocker crashing into the dark forest of middle age — and of his encounter with the suicidal young Beatrice who may manage, if inadvertently, to lead him out of it — picked up the Golden Bear at this year’s Berlin Film Festival, and deservedly so. Life and death battle mightily for the souls of two first-generation Turkish-Germans — alcoholic slacker Cahit (Mick/Keith look-alike Birol Ünel) and middle-class rebel girl Sibel (Sibel Kekilli) — amid a degenerate city ambiance straight outta Fassbinder. Meanwhile a Turkish pop group, seated against a backdrop of the Bosporus and Istanbul’s gorgeous Aya Sofia mosque, provides occasional narration — and a welcome distraction from the misery of Mitteleuropa. (ArcLight 10, Fri., Nov. 5, 9:30 p.m.; Arclight 13, Mon., Nov. 8, noon) (Ron Stringer)
ROCK FRESH (USA)
Using the world of graffiti artists and their assorted struggles as source material, director Danny Lee shows how this relatively new art-world category (“aerosol arts”) contains the same struggles that have plagued artists forever: the struggle to strike a balance between artistry and the demands of commerce; the struggle to balance day jobs with the time needed for creativity, etc. With a hip-hop and trip-hop soundtrack to remind you that this is not your granny’s tortured artist, and with settings from inner-city street corners to downtown L.A. to Tokyo, this urban essay on a decidedly urban art form embodies the grittiness of the world it captures. (ArcLight 12, Fri., Nov. 5, 9:30 p.m.; ArcLight 13, Sat., Nov. 13, 9:45 p.m.) (EH)
*ONG BAK: THAI WARRIOR (Thailand)
A glimpse into the airborne future of the martial-arts movie. Muay Thai kickboxing prodigy Phanom Yeerum (re-named Tony Jaa for his U.S. debut) never needs to be hoisted on wires to catch more air than Michael Jordan; he then plummets down, like death from above, in a flurry of bone-crushing knees and elbows, upon a succession of hapless opponents. Playing an earnest young village lad searching for a stolen religious idol in the decadent lower depths of Bangkok, Yeerum has a likably bashful manner when he isn’t kicking ass, and director Prachya Pinkaew (999-9999) is a real discovery, a witty orchestrator of human and vehicular mayhem. Two thumbs way up. (ArcLight 14, Fri., Nov. 5, 9:45 p.m.; ArcLight 10, Sun., Nov. 7, 2 p.m.) (David Chute)
