Beyond the Multiplex

Films to watch for at De Niro's big bash. Plus: Dan Clowes and Terry Zwigoff explain "Art School Confidential."

By Andrew O'Hehir

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

Lee Young-ae as Lee Geum-ja in Park Chanwook's "Lady Vengeance"

April 27, 2006 | It's easier to say what the Tribeca Film Festival isn't than to explain exactly what it is. It isn't the most important festival for independent cinema in the world (that would be Cannes) or in the United States (that's clearly Sundance, even as it is today). It doesn't show more films than any other fest (the Berlinale is significantly larger), although in terms of sheer quantity, it's up there. It isn't primarily an industry-insider trade show, the way Sundance, Cannes and Toronto are. Even in New York, the capital of all things self-referential, you don't sell 250,000 tickets (a number Tribeca may hit this year) without doing what film festivals are supposed to do, meaning appeal to some more-or-less regular folks who want to see good movies they might never catch otherwise.

The standard story line put forward about Tribeca goes like this: It started in 2002 when Robert De Niro and his longtime producing pal Jane Rosenthal decided to "do something" to boost lower Manhattan, which was economically struggling in the wake of the 9/11 attack. It was a plucky venture with some star power, but pretty much held together with Scotch tape and coat hangers. Venues were miscellaneous and marketing was haphazard, but they booked a few splashy premieres and a lot of interesting-looking small movies, and did pretty well. No one was quite sure what the future held, but -- hey! Cut to four years later, and the damn thing has eaten Manhattan.

Like a lot of things journalists tell you, this is true without quite being the whole story. It's clear, when you go back and read the initial media coverage of the '02 festival, that Rosenthal and De Niro had been cooking this idea a long time. I'm not disputing their benevolent motives, but the aftermath of 9/11, to put it bluntly, was a business opportunity. Tribeca (the triangular slice of Manhattan below Canal Street) was already the center of their empire, and was rapidly becoming independent film's industry HQ as well. It was the logical place to stage an East Coast answer to Sundance, where many people in the business (and most of the entertainment media) could sleep in their own beds and eat in familiar overpriced restaurants.

Furthermore -- although I don't think anyone has said this on the record -- De Niro and Rosenthal may have felt that the New York Film Festival, held at Lincoln Center in the fall, was vulnerable to a challenge. While the NYFF remains a marquee event, reliably showcasing a lot of the winter season's big-name films, there is something a little sober and institutional about it, something a little skinny-tie, early-'60s scholar-ish. It conveys an aura of earnestness and seriousness, of caring about Great Film. For all the star power and corporate sponsorship it represents, Tribeca cashes in on downtown's hedonistic reputation: It somehow seems hipper, funkier, less professorial.

As far as I can tell, Tribeca now aspires to be all the things I said it wasn't in the first paragraph. It might already be the most important film event in New York's year. With 174 feature films this year (that's according to David Carr of the New York Times; I ain't counting), it's among the world's biggest festivals. If it's unlikely to replace Sundance as Indiewood's biggest auction block, it's becoming a plausible alternative. Duncan Tucker's "Transamerica" was acquired at Tribeca last year (by the Weinstein Co.) and went on to become one of the year's surprise hits -- and that has everybody in the biz combing over this year's roster with predatory lust.

There's no automatic breakout candidate among this year's Tribeca films (which, despite the festival's neighborhoody name, will be screened as far north as 68th Street), but festivals are supposed to surprise us, and this one surely will. I've already seen two terrific foreign films: Emmanuelle Bercot's "Backstage," a lurid, absorbing drama starring Emmanuelle Seignier as a Madonna-esque French pop star and Isild Le Besco as the fan who gets too close; and Nelson Pereira dos Santos' "Brasília 18%," an enigmatic political-erotic thriller set in the tropical yet artificial surroundings of Brazil's capital. (I have no idea what the title means.)

Beyond that, of course, it's anybody's guess and all the usual caveats apply. But as I file special reports from Tribeca for Salon over the next few days, here are some of the films I'm most excited to see. Ambitious narrative features are a beleaguered genre these days -- so many get made, and so very, very few get seen -- but that's still what we old-fashioned folk mean when we say "movie," so let's start there.

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