Beyond the Multiplex

Headed your way: A haunting Aussie coming-of-age tale, a Romanian "comedy" from medical hell, and a doc about antiwar GIs during Vietnam.

By Andrew O'Hehir

Read more: Andrew O'Hehir, Movies, Movie Reviews, Arts & Entertainment, Reviews, Beyond the Multiplex

Sam Worthington and Abbie Cornish in "Somersault"

April 20, 2006 | We've hit a tiny calm patch in the film release calendar this week, right before all hell breaks loose. The Tribeca Film Festival begins next week in New York; I'll preview it in next week's column and review some of the major premieres in the following days. If Tribeca began in 2002 as a local event for the devastated downtown neighborhoods of Manhattan, it has now become the independent-film industry's biggest backyard barbecue, a hometown gathering of near-Sundance proportions just before many people in the biz decamp for the grand-père of all festivals in Cannes. It's a tough life, I tell you; eating unripe Brie in random hotel suites and holding conversations with strangers about their latest Bluetooth gizmos just isn't for everybody.

What's that, you say? Right, right, the point of the whole enterprise is supposed to be the movies. How easily one forgets. This week we've got three outstanding films from last year's festival circuit, finally getting their brief shot at attracting actual paying customers. "Three Times," a languorous three-chapter love story from the Taiwanese master Hou Hsiao-hsien, is in some respects the most noteworthy of these. Although Hou might be the biggest critic's-darling director of the past 15 years, he's never before had a film released through normal distribution channels in the United States. (Stephanie Zacharek reviewed "Three Times" at last year's New York Film Festival; it opens April 26 at the IFC Center in New York, with more cities likely to follow, and will be available through IFC's pay-per-view service on some cable systems.)

Then there's "Somersault," the debut by Australian director Cate Shortland, a moody and visually prodigious set-piece about a young girl's coming-of-age in which dialogue and plot are almost superfluous. "The Death of Mr. Lazarescu," from Romania's Cristi Puiu, on the other hand, is a harrowingly realistic medical odyssey driven mostly by the ambiguous, interlocking webs of human communication.

These three pictures could hardly be more different, yet they confirm my sense that we're experiencing a mini-golden age of international filmmaking. Is there an audience for all these movies? Regular readers of this space know that I'm skeptical about that, but in fairness this season has been a promising one so far for the bean counters of Indiewood. Nicole Holofcener's "Friends With Money" -- which I'll defend against all comers -- is becoming a breakout hit ($1.5 million in two weeks, with a major rollout still to come). Mary Harron's "Notorious Bettie Page" had a good opening week among what the marketing people call "urban core" audiences (but didn't do well in suburbia). Michael Haneke's creepy "Caché" has racked up a surprising $3.5 million and is still playing in many cities. Rian Johnson's Hammett-goes-to-high-school opus "Brick" is the sleeper of the spring; at $636,000 and counting, it's already earned back its production costs. Kevin Willmott's acrid mockumentary "CSA" has quietly piled up more than $500,000.

Well below that level, I see other signs of hope. Even in an overcrowded week, Anne Fontaine's terrific "Nathalie" opened decently in New York, and the challenging Russian film "4" continues to cling implausibly to life at Manhattan's Cinema Village. The Dardenne brothers' wrenching drama "L'Enfant" just crept past $250,000, and Joseph Lovett's ribald documentary "Gay Sex in the '70s" should just about hit that. Let's not discuss the commercial fate of other films I've championed, such as Fernando Eimbcke's "Duck Season" (a bad title, I guess) or Carlos Reygadas' "Battle in Heaven" (scary, real-life sex scenes). Overall, the picture is surprisingly bright. If you saw any of the films I've just mentioned, take a moment, sitting there in your cubicle, to feel proud: Evil corporate monoculture may have captured everybody and everything else, but it hasn't captured you!

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