AFI Fest: A to W

 
CRITIC’S PICK  PRODIGAL SONS (USA) Like Jonathan Caouette’s 2003 Tarnation, Kimberly Reed’s Prodigal Sons shows that DIY cinematic autobiographies can be much more than just indulgent grad-school-thesis navel gazes. Sons has all the pitfalls of the genre — self-realization, troubled past, lack of structure — and yet it transcends them thanks to Reed’s ability to get out of the way and let a great story tell itself. The film begins as a record of Reed’s return to Helena, Montana, where she grew up as Paul McKerrow, a co-captain of the high-school football team, only to later undergo successful gender-reassignment surgery and start a new life back east. Reed’s homecoming is upstaged by her adopted brother, Marc, who’s still jealous of Kim/Paul’s childhood popularity and confused by the fact that his brother is now his sister. Marc, who suffers from the effects of a massive head injury in his youth, then finds out he’s the biological grandson of Orson Welles and Rita Hayworth. And this is still only the first half-hour. While Reed’s doc lacks the wild iMovie exuberance of Tarnation, she has a patient eye, and this is what ultimately makes the rough but entirely captivating Prodigal Sons a true documentary rather than a freak show, personal essay or rant. Reed keeps the camera rolling as her filmed diary develops into a portrait of an entire family — one that’s bizarre, unbelievable and, deep down, not that different from most others. (ArcLight Hollywood, Sat., Nov. 1, 9:30 p.m.; Mon., Nov. 3, 12:45 p.m.) (James C. Taylor)

 
GO  REVANCHE (Austria) Stationed somewhere between chamber drama and revenge thriller, this tightly wound film from writer-director Götz Spielmann places its precision-caliber focus on two very different couples: a policeman and his wife living in the Austrian countryside, and a prostitute (Irinia Potapenko) and her errand-boy lover (Johannes Krisch) trying to wriggle out from under the thumb of a brutal pimp in Vienna’s red-light district. A seemingly can’t-miss bank robbery provides the unlikely point of connection, but Spielmann shows markedly less interest in narrative coincidences than in the relationships between men and women and the complex emotional aftermath of loss. In his first major screen role, Krisch is a standout in an excellent ensemble — an actor of electrifying physicality who can also make compelling business out of staring off into the horizon. (ArcLight Hollywood, Sat., Nov. 1, noon; Sun., Nov. 2, 10:15 p.m.) (SF)

Teresa Isasi/IFC Films

Che

Related Content

• Why You Have to See The Master in 70mm
  September 14, 2012
• The Master's Master
  September 6, 2012
• Joaquin Phoenix Returns in Paul Thomas Anderson's Scientology-inspired The Master
  September 10, 2012
• The Master Review: Paul Thomas Anderson Reteams With Philip Seymour Hoffman
  September 13, 2012
• In Defense of Grizzly Bear
  October 11, 2012

More About

• Hollywood
• Kimberly Reed
• Andre Williams
• Takeshi Kitano
• Chris Taylor

 
GO  SHAKESPEARE AND VICTOR HUGO’S INTIMACIES (Mexico) By turns tender and ferociously creepy, director Yulene Olaizola’s documentary plays connect-the-dots with the strangely symbiotic relationship of Rosa Carvajal (the filmmaker’s grandmother) and Jorge Riosse, a troubled young man who once lived in her Mexico City boarding house. The camera focuses on Carvajal as she rattles around her old dark house remembering her long-dead tenant with affection and terror, but it’s Riosse’s unseen presence that steals the show. By the time Olaizola floats the possibility that grandma’s “beloved madman” was an artistically inclined serial killer who painted better than Gacy and wrote catchier tunes than Manson, we’re hooked. (ArcLight Hollywood, Thurs., Nov. 6, 7 p.m.; Fri., Nov. 7, 3:15 p.m.) (Lance Goldenberg)

 
STILL ORANGUTANS (Brazil) Mainly notable for consisting of a single 81-minute tracking shot, director Gustavo Spolidero’s film wears its poisoned heart on its sleeve as it follows a motley crew of fringe dwellers through the steamy streets of Porto Alegre, Brazil. The characters scream, argue and flail about in all directions, but nothing particularly interesting results, and the only thing holding together the random vignettes is the movie’s stylistic gimmick — and the filmmaker’s underwhelming appreciation for excess and hysteria. That’s a poor substitute for imagination, however, and Spolidero’s one-trick pony barely qualifies as an anti–Russian Ark. (ArcLight Hollywood, Mon., Nov. 3, 7:10 p.m.; Tues., Nov. 4, 12:30 p.m.) (LG)

 
CRITIC’S PICK  SUGAR (USA) The second dramatic feature by Half Nelson creators Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck (who here share directing credit) gets as much right about baseball as any movie I’ve ever seen. It gets the hum of the electric lights in the ozone-heavy summer air and the satisfying smack of a knuckle curve as it lands squarely in the catcher’s mitt. It exults in the zigzag poetry of the white ball with the red stripes — to the shortstop, to second, to first. Double play! Above all, it understands baseball as a crucible of the American Dream, for Americans themselves and for those who long to come to these shores. In telling the fictional story of a young Dominican pitcher, Miguel “Sugar” Santos (gifted newcomer Algenis Perez Soto), during his first season on the roster of an MLB farm team, Sugar traces a factual line through several generations of minority immigrant ballplayers, from Hiram Bithorn and Roberto Clemente to Sammy Sosa. It’s a gorgeous film — subtle, observant, full of life — and the surprise isn’t how good it is but rather how true it rings. Fleck and Boden are a long way away from Half Nelson’s gritty Brooklyn verisimilitude here, but Sugar feels every bit as lived-in, whether we’re on the dirt streets of a Dominican Republic shantytown or the hardened clay of a Bridgeport, Indiana, single-A ballpark. (ArcLight Hollywood, Thurs., Nov. 6, 7 p.m.; Fri., Nov. 7, 3 p.m.) (SF)