FOR three weeks in June the Seattle International Film Festival treated us to 175 features and 75 shorts. The largest and most widely attended film festival in the US, Seattle serves as a major launching pad for the ever growing flock of American independent films, as well as providing a fascinating mix of world cinema to the city's film crazed and caffeine intoxicated audiences.
To no one's surprise, the sensation of this year's festival was the US premiere of Danny Boyle's Trainspotting, which easily swept the audience's awards for both best film and best director. And, although nothing else on view could quite compete with the cinematic audacity of Boyle's sophomore outing, there were enough great movies and new discoveries around to warm the heart of even the most jaded film critic.
Unfortunately, the festival began on a less than inspired note with the opening night presentation of director Dan Ireland's The Whole Wide World. Ireland, who co founded the Seattle Film Festival with the current festival director, Darryl Macdonald, back in the 1970s, based his feature debut on an autobiographical novel by Novalyne Price Ellis, which recounted, her turbulent romantic relationship with Robert E. Howard, the troubled 1930s writer who created such pulp fiction classics as Conan the Barbarian and Red Sonja.
Although it looked picture postcard beautiful the film was burdened by some unspeakable dialogue and directed in an unbearably earnest style, achieving absolutely no chemistry between its stars, Vincent D'Onofrio and Renee Zellweger. I watched the movie in embarrassment, mostly through my fingers.
Ireland was represented by Martin Duffy's The Boy from Mercury, Chris Bould's My Friend Joe, and Gerard Stembridge's Guiltrip. Meanwhile, Irish actor John Lynch gives a heartbreaking performance as a young man with schizophrenia trying to make a life with a fellow patient (the superb Jacqueline McKenzie) in Angel Baby, by Australian director, Michael Rymer. Julie Walters peerlessly conveys repressed passion in Philip Goodhew's darkly comic study of 1950s English suburbia, Intimate Relations, and Dutch director Robert Jan Westdijk very stylishly takes the Hitchcockian concept of the subjective camera to its ultimate conclusion by filming most of his protagonist's story through the lens of a video camera, in Little Sister.
Possibly the most interesting selection of films came from the Far East and, although there was the occasional disappointment the majority of the films were outstanding in their richness. Three favourites: from China/Hong Kong, Wu Tianming's sumptuously shot and beautifully acted The King of the Masks, a tale of an old man trying to find an heir to whom he can pass on the secrets of his profession from Taiwan, Vive L'Amour, Tsai Ming liang's Antonionisque portrait, of big city anomie and alienation it was this, year's Safe and also from Taiwan, former Seattle resident, Edward Yang's Mahiong.
In films such as The Terroriser, Yang, masterfully followed the cinematic lead of directors like Hitchcock and Antonioni. Now he has shifted gear, mining rich, dark comedy from the consumer paradise that is Taipei. And in Yang's leading lady, French actress Virgine Ledoyen, the festival discovered a new star. Ledoyen also turned up on her native soil in Benoit Jacquot's A Single Girl. Following a day in the life of a hotel room service employee, and shot almost entirely in real time, Ledoyen was in every scene and was simply stunning.
THE godfathers of American, independent film making, Jim Jarmusch and John Sayles, both had their latest offerings on display. Jarmusch's allegorical Western Dead Man, seen at the Dublin Film Festival, gave us Johnny Depp as Bill Blake, an Ohio accountant turned outlaw in 1880s Oregan territory. With a funny yet haunting performance by Depp, razorsharp black and white cinematography by Robby Muller and a great Neil Young score, the film's first hour is a fascinating journey in Jarmusch style. Unfortunately, it later turns into an exercise in metaphysical genre bending with a tad too many allusions to William Blake's poetry. Still, an absolute must for Jarmusch aficionados everywhere.
Sayles's Texas mystery, Lone Star, about a border town sheriff's investigation into an unsolved 40 year old murder played it safe. Gliding fluently between time frames with an ease that calls to mind Altman's Jimmy Dean, the film strikes a perfect balance between social commentary and crime drama, becoming his finest work since Matewan.
The disciples of Jarmusch and Sayles (not to mention Scorsese and Cassavetes) were present in abundance. Director Eric Bross brought Mean Streets to the Jersey shore with his promising debut Nothing to Lose while John Walsh drew on his experience working with Nancy Savoca on True Love and Dogfight with his charming tale of a country boy in New York in Ed's Next Move.
Screenwriter David Koepp, who wrote that exquisite study in paranoia, Apartment Zero, made an impressive debut with The Trigger Effect starring Kyle MacLaughlin and a now very A-list Elisabeth Shue as a suburban couple. Koepp's directorial talent is particularly evident in a brilliantly executed roadside scene with Dermot Mulroney and Michael Rooker. Meanwhile, everyone got to revisit their worst school nightmares in Todd Solondz's deliciously spiteful little movie, Welcome to the Dollhouse, with Heather Matarazzo as a sort of creepy Carrie without telekenetic powers, tortured by her classmates and her family, Yum.
Canadian actor Henry Czerny gave a remarkable performance as an alienated, nameless civil servant in Gary Walkow's, surprisingly funny adaptation of Dostoevsky, Notes from Underground, while Alan Taylor's Palookaville and Nicole Holofcener's Walking and Talking offered the best ensemble casts of the festival.
Adapted from several Italo Calvino stories, Palookaville affectionately follows three New Jersey would be crooks as they mess up bone heist after another. William Forsythe, Adam Trese and Vincent Gallo are the endearing trio.
In Walking and Talking, Catherine Keener and Anne Heche have a beautiful rapport as longtrip friends whose relationship is tested when one of them gets married. My own personal indie favourite was Lisa Krueger's Manny & Leo which follows the adventure of two sisters, Amanda aged 11 and Laurel aged 16, who kidnap a middle aged woman and hold her hostage as they prepare for the birth of Laurel's baby. Although rooted in realism, Krueger manages to give her film a magical, fairytale quality, with Mary Kay Place giving a great Geraldine Page like performance as the older woman who becomes the girls' guardian angel. A gem.
The festival saved its greatest treat for the closing night film Douglas McGrath's sublime Emma. The latest and the best of the Jane Austen adaptations (following Persuasion, Sense and Sensibility, and TV's Pride and Prejudice) the story focuses on Emma Woodhouse, a beautiful young woman who is so busy meddling in the lives and romances of others that she may just miss out on her chance to learn about love firsthand. Sound familiar? Last year director Amy Heckerling unofficially transposed Emma to Beverly Hills High in the fabulous Clueless. This time it's Gwyneth Paltrow's turn and she's every bit as captivating as Alicia Silverstone. Even as we speak, revival house programmers are planning that most perfect of double bills. Emma and Clueless, Gwyneth and Alicia.
