Although it’s not as prestigious as Toronto, New York, and Telluride, the Big Three of the North American film festival circuit, my heart palpitates, my hands shake, my eyeballs rotate uncontrollably every time the brochure containing the full lineup of the Chicago International Film Festival falls out of my mailbox. I’ve been going to the Film Festival since 1999, and it’s been one of the shining lights of my fall season; every October, for two weeks, world cinema, in all its edgy, obscure, esoteric glory, comes to Chicago. This year is quite the bountiful harvest, compared to the slim pickings of last year, with 174 films from 46 countries, many of them coming to Chicago already having been acclaimed in other film festivals, so I have spent several days diligently perusing the program catalog to choose the ones I am going to (and as a public service to my blog readers). It’s been tough, but I think I am going to have quite the film festival experience this year (now, if only last-minute business travel waits until November 1 to rear its ugly head).
I normally don’t go to American or British movies during the Festival since I know they usually will turn up within a couple of weeks of Festival close in regular movie theaters to begin their Oscar consideration runs. However, for my avid blog readers who break out into hives anytime there’s even a hint of a subtitle on screen, there’s several really exceptional films you can go to: Charlie Kaufman’s debut movie, Synecdoche, New York, whose bizarre narrative and visual style divided critics at Cannes; Darren Aronofsky’s Toronto sleeper, The Wrestler, which has already generated the flummoxing, and potentially scary, whisper of “Mickey Rourke for Oscar Best Actor”; and Danny Boyle’s crowd-pleaser, Slumdog Millionaire, which garnered several standing ovations in Toronto. Although all three directors are attending their films’ screenings (and it’s very tempting to show some leg to Darren Aronofsky- take that Rachel Weisz!), I’m not planning to go to these. On the other hand, I will be going to Hunger, visual artist Steve McQueen’s stunning film debut, about IRA leader Bobby Sands’s hunger strike, which already won the Camera D’Or prize at Cannes; and Wendy and Lucy by indie filmmaker Kelly Reichardt, about a poor woman seeking help for her dog, which has drawn raves, and Oscar buzz, for Michelle Williams’s central performance.
Several high-profile film festival favorites are also part of the Chicago program: Cannes prize-winners Gomorra (winner of the Grand Jury Prize), Matteo Garrone’s drama about the Neapolitan mafia, and Arnaud Desplechin’s Un Conte de Noel (special award for Catherine Deneuve’s performance), about an estranged family, as well as Philippe Claudel’s I’ve Loved You So Long, which has drawn deafening Oscar buzz for Kristin Scott Thomas’s lead performance as an ex-con reuniting with her sister. I’m skipping these in favor of the more obscure festival prize-winners, which have a snowball’s chance in hell in getting commercial runs in Chicago: Cannes critics’ choice winner Delta, a Hungarian movie about incest in the bayou; Karlovy Vary film festival winner Terribly Happy, from Denmark, about a policeman in a town full of horrific secrets, which seems like a cross between The Wire and Saw, but with cute, blonde denizens; Berlin prize-winner, Revanche, also Austria’s entry to the Oscar Foreign Language Film race, which has more cops, but this time mixed with hookers (which may be as scary); and another Berlin prize-winner, famed Iranian director Majid Majidi’s latest film, The Song of the Sparrows, about a taxi cab driver and his upper-class passengers who reflect the current moral tensions of Iran.
The Festival has always had strong Asian cinema representation, but this year is magnificent. There’s not one, but two films from the Philippines, which I’ll be first in line for: Serbis, which gained notoriety at Cannes for mixing explicit gay sex, social commentary, an ass boil, and a goat inexplicably wandering a movie theater, baffling even the New York Times’ snotty film critic, A.O. Scott; and Brutus, the Journey, about illegal logging and indigenous tribes in the Philippines. After I get my Filipino movie fix, I’ll be off to these other Asian cinema gems: acclaimed Chinese director Jin Zhang-ke’s 24 City, a mix of fiction and documentary about life in China which has left many a film critic in epileptic seizures of delight; the Korean spaghetti western (or should it be called chap chae western then?) The Good, the Bad and the Weird, which has gotten good reviews in Cannes and Toronto; and Johnnie To’s Sparrow, which a lot of people felt should have won the top prize in Berlin.
One thing I really love about the Festival is that you get to see rare gems from other countries that have not been talked up in other festivals, that have no US distribution, that are those little hidden discoveries that make sloshing through hours of artsy camera work, befuddling narratives, and stilted acting worth it. Hopefully one, if not all, of these films I am going to will turn out to be this jewel: the Brazilian movie The Dead Girl’s Feast is about mysticism and religious fervor; Native Dancer, from Kazakhstan, is about a shaman who does battle with local businessmen; the Hungarian movie Tranquility mixes Oedipal complex, a Paganini score, and art film nudity in what could either be masterpiece or a trainwreck.
The Chicago International Film Festival runs from October 16-29, 2008. Check out the website for venues and screening schedules.
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