Los Angeles Film Festival 2011 Preview

LEAVE IT ON THE FLOOR There's much to like in Sheldon Larry and Glenn Gaylord's musical: some wonderfully bitchy one-liners, musical numbers that only just miss their mark but are still largely enjoyable (especially the Stevie Wonder–inflected show tunes), the chance to see L.A. ball culture repped on-screen (with black gay folk taking care of one another), and some amazing eye candy. But much of the exposition-heavy dialogue looks right through the characters to "explain" the milieu (lingo, politics) to outsiders; references and influences (Rent, Dreamgirls, Paris Is Burning) are leaned on too heavily; the ending is so determined to send viewers out of the theater feeling good that conflicts are too quickly (even bafflingly) resolved, with a tragedy that was earlier used to milk tears completely erased. This should be a hoot to watch with a crowd, but it doesn't hold up to close scrutiny. (E.H.)

LOVE CRIME Alain Corneau's Serie Noire, one of the great French crime films, was adapted from Jim Thompson's A Hell of a Woman by novelist Georges Perec, who rendered its dialogue almost entirely in hard-boiled clichés. Three decades later, in his final film (he passed away last August at the age of 67), Corneau transmutes the banalities of Perec's script into the set design for Love Crime, which, for its first hour at least, looks like it was shot in a showroom at the local Ethan Allen. Corneau uses these soulless spaces to mirror the power struggle between an icy Kristin Scott Thomas and Ludivine Sagnier (doing her best Chloe Sevigny), potential lovers and competing ladder-climbers at a multinational corporation. A sudden act of violence breaks the movie in two, and what follows pares away Corneau's materialist interest, while unpacking the slyness of the plotting that had preceded it, in order to set up a bitterly sentimental final twist. (P.C.)

Family Instinct

Mysteries of Lisbon

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L.A. LIVE

800 W. Olympic Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90015

Category: Community Venues

Region: Downtown

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• Heather Courtney
• Chely Wright
• Plymouth Sundance
• Arts, Entertainment, and Media
• Film Festivals

MAMITAS At one point in Mamitas, Echo Park bad boy Jordin (E.J. Bonilla) confesses that he's drawn to bookish Felipa (Veronica Diaz-Carranza) because with her he doesn't have to act like the swaggering asshole everyone else expects. The strength of writer-director Nicholas Ozeki's coming-of-age romance is that he strikes a wonderful balance between "performed," expected representations of Latino culture and shrewd dismantling of the same. Jordin comes from a troubled family whose secret-laden past shadows them. Felipa, a New Yorker living with L.A. relatives because of her own family troubles, is the polar opposite of the girls Jordin normally chases. Their initial connection is a little contrived, and the film's ending is rushed, but between those bookends is a sweet exploration of young love against a backdrop of complex family dynamics. Though the writing and pacing could be tighter, Bonilla and Diaz-Carranza have fantastic chemistry. (E.H.)

CRITIC'S PICK  MYSTERIES OF LISBON Filmmaker Raul Ruiz adapts Camilo Branco’s 19th-century Romantic novel and turns it into the kind of utterly absorbing masterwork one might expect from the director of such intricate and playful films as Hypothesis of the Stolen Painting, Three Lives and Only One Death and Time Regained (not to mention more than 100 other titles in the last half-century). The grand narrative — which bears comparison to the works of Victor Hugo — emanates from an orphan seeking his identity and expands forward and backward in time through the boy’s relations in the Portuguese aristocracy. Originally a six-hour miniseries, this roughly four-hour theatrical cut entrances with elaborate costumes, candlelit interiors and arresting landscapes. But unlike typical period dramas, it boasts a sly self-consciousness (distortions, exaggerated close-ups and unexpected tracking shots) that emphasizes its artifice. This is a filmmaker who relishes the telling of tales, and his enthusiasm is felt in every frame. (D.C.)

NATURAL SELECTION The inexplicable winner of multiple prizes at this year's SXSW stars comedian Rachael Harris as Linda, a housewife whose devout Christian husband won't have sex with her because she's infertile. When hubby has a stroke, Linda discovers his secret life and hits the road to track down his 23-year-old illegitimate son, a hot loser who is happy to accompany Linda back to meet his dad if it helps him evade the fuzz. This dramedy of an odd couple using the road as a safe space in which to court via the swapping of life stories/life lessons is all post-Sundance cliché. It's not a movie about people living lives, but a movie about collections of quirks moving through situations. (K.L.)

CRITIC'S PICK  ONCE I WAS A CHAMPION An unexpectedly moving look at the short life of Ultimate Fighting Championship star Evan Tanner, Gerard Roxburgh's documentary manages to celebrate its subject without ever slipping into hagiography. Filled with interview and fight footage of Tanner, as well as talking heads powerfully sketching in his life (often moved to tears while doing so), the film maps Tanner's troubled youth, unpredictable and self-sabotaging career choices, battle with alcoholism and the ongoing mystery of his death — was it a suicide? The portrait that emerges is that of a very troubled but deeply spiritual man of surprising intellectual prowess who saw his life as a soul journey with the mandate to treat everyone he met with kindness and respect. This may well be one of the most inspiring and heartbreaking films in the festival. (E.H.)