If you read my coverage of last year’s Los Angeles Film Festival, you’ll remember that I was not exactly thrilled by the movies I saw. That’s not to say that good movies didn’t play—it was where I discovered both Man on Wire and Boy A, two of my favorite films of the whole year, and there were loads of terrific choices I didn’t catch until later—but rather that I had bad luck with my selections. Going into this year’s chapter of the festival, I was optimistic, set on avoiding the same fate. After Day One, it was clear I needed to rethink my strategy because I was already batting 0-for-3.
Adhen is beautifully shot and tackles a potent, topical issue, but it’s a frustratingly incomplete movie. The setting is a rundown palette factory in France, where working-class immigrant Algerians are exploited by their boss, Mao (Rabah Ameur-Zaïmeche, the co-writer/director). Mao gets away with paying his predominantly Muslim crew bottom-of-the-barrel wages by erecting a mosque in their favor, using the power of religion to ensure they don’t question him. He appoints the Imam (Larbi Zekkour) himself, using the man to convert the staff so his leverage will further. But there’s an uprising in store, as two factory mechanics (Salim Ameur- Zaïmeche and Abel Jafri) rally behind new Muslim Titi (Christian Milia-Darmezin) in questioning Mao’s religiosity and lack of care for the employees. The film’s quasi-documentary, fly-on-the-wall style is both a blessing and a curse. On one hand, it allows Adhen to stand out as another enlightening piece of realism in a growing body of cinematic representations of Muslim immigrants in France. The film feels completely authentic, and those adventurous American audiences willing to watch it will no doubt learn quite a bit (I did). Then again, this is potentially dangerous if Adhen is not an accurate blanket representation of working-class Algerians in France, which is very possible. It is a rather political film, and I’m sure the opposing side has something to say about it. But that’s not the big problem with the way the message is conveyed. Instead, it’s that factory life is painfully dull and, no matter how realistically depicted, it wears on the viewer. Yes, this sense of wear is part of the point of Adhen, but I’m unwilling to accept the notion that a film can be effective solely by capturing boredom. The subject matter may seem similar to Laurent Cantet’s exceptional The Class on paper, but I assure you, the comparisons end there. There are certainly isolated moments of engagement in the picture—a shocking scene in which Titi circumcises himself to become a “real Muslim,” a beautiful sequence set on a river, et cetera—but on the whole it's too tedious for its own good.
Nonetheless, there’s no denying that Adhen boasts its share of accomplishments. Cinematographer Irina Lubtchansky works with the confinements of the factory, tightly photographing through each orifice between stacks of red palettes, and captures the toils of working-class life. It’s true that the images in Adhen often seem too perfect for the gritty material, but without them, the movie wouldn’t be near as distinct or reflective of the social paralysis of its characters. Also strong are the performances, which are all too easily taken for granted because they appropriately lack any grand-standing and keep things authentic. It’s a shame that the partially-successful picture may have been doomed to failure from its inception in that making a fully engrossing movie on daily-life in a supremely laborious, dull setting is a paradox. In order to really work, Adhen would have had to transform into something else entirely. The film may have many rewarding elements, but most audiences are likely to be snoozing before they recognize them. 2-1/2 Buckets out of 4.
As most festival-goers filed into the Mann Festival theater for Davis Guggenheim’s documentary on the electric guitar starring Jack White, Jimmy Paige, and The Edge—It Might Get Loud—I decided to counterprogram with one of LAFF’s “Guilty Pleasures” selections, Weather Girl. Unfortunately, standing five feet from supporting actress Kaitlin Olson on the red carpet was more exciting for this “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” fan than anything in the movie itself. After a small theatrical release, Weather Girl will premiere on the Lifetime Channel in October and, boy, will it be right at home there.
My crappy, covert camera-phone capture of Sweet Dee in the flesh, greeting reporters on the red carpet.
The title newscaster is Sylvia (Tricia O’Kelly). In the opening sequence of the film, she has an on-air eruption, deciding she’ll call out quintessentially moronic anchors Dale (Mark Harmon) and Sherry (Olson) on numerous character flaws on the air. Most notably, Dale weaseled his way into a sex-based relationship with Sylvia, only to leave her for his bumbling idiot of a co-host. While the scene leaves Sylvia without a job and all over the Internet in embarrassing form, things slowly but surely turn around for our heroine, as they always do in this type of movie. Circumstance forces her to move in with her brother, Walt (Ryan Devlin), who allows his web-designer friend and Sylvia’s soon-to-be love-interest Byron (Patrick J. Adams) over to use the Internet while his is down. On the emotional rebound, Sylvia once again faces a tough decision when she’s inevitably offered her job back at the station to improve sweeps ratings.
While Weather Girl is never a painful sit, it never fully realizes itself as a romance, a comedy, or a combination of the two. This problem stems from the way Sylvia is written. In the opening sequence, she is established as a caricature rather than a character, grand-standing in climactic fashion as if only to make the audience hoot and holler at the drama. While very glib, this technique would be OK if writer/director Blayne Weaver’s only goal was to make the viewer laugh at Sylvia the entire time. But instead he targets a more sympathetic portrayal—especially as the movie goes on—and his expectation that we simultaneously treat her as an over-written ploy for laughs and a real human proves impossible. Needless to say, Sylvia’s ensuing lack of authentic emotion means her romance with Byron comes off as artificial, not sweet or compelling. Actress O’Kelly is a champ throughout and tackles the role as best she can, but her attempts are futile within the confines of Weaver’s script.
Yes, there are select enjoyable moments in Weather Girl, most of which involve actors Harmon and Olson hamming it up for the camera as all-too-realistic news anchors. But given Will Ferrell and Adam McKay’s legendary Anchorman already stands as the definitive broadcasting comedy, this disjointed melodrama’s attempts to engage the audience in that way seem unnecessary. If you’re bored one day and find Weather Girl on Lifetime when channel-surfing, it’s an acceptable time-killer, but there isn’t any other reason to see it. 2 Buckets out of 4; screens again on Weds, Jun 24 at 9:30 p.m. at the Landmark.
Then again, Weather Girl has nothing on Matthew Bissonnette’s Passenger Side when it comes to empty caricatures. The film stars Adam Scott (Knocked Up, Step Brothers) and Joel Bissonnette as brothers Michael and Tobey, who are not so much people as they are mouthpieces for dialogue. The only background the viewer gets is that it’s Michael’s birthday, and he has canceled the plans he had with his girlfriend so he can drive recovering drug-addict Tobey around L.A. on mysterious “errands” all day. And drive they do, from Echo Park to Glendale to Joshua Tree to the Valley to Long Beach and back. They seem to sit in a lot of traffic, but nonetheless cover at least 350 miles in about 12 hours. I didn’t know that was possible in this town, especially when one is forced to take a detour to rush a kid with two severed fingers to a hospital and to sit down for a long lunch with a lonely old lady.
Had the conversation or the main performances been particularly deep or authentic, then Passenger Side could have been an interesting and/or emotional experience. But they’re not. That’s not to say that there’s anything inherently wrong with the two elements, other than perhaps their overextended desire to conform to the indie standard for "quirkiness." They’re simply unremarkable and therefore don’t contribute much to an already unremarkable movie. For instance, when we find out what Tobey is actually looking for on this long (albeit circular) journey, the revelation could have led to some quietly poignant scenes between the brothers but instead the ensuing material is just flat. At times, it seems as though leads Scott and Bissonnette completely misread the script, crafting restrained portrayals under the assumption there was something underneath that wasn’t actually present.
The one regard in which the movie really works is as a love letter to Greater Los Angeles. Joining the recent Drag Me to Hell as a cinematic representation of a gentrified Echo Park in the first scenes, the film expands in geography as it moves and does so beautifully. Director Bissonnette doesn’t show L.A. in an unrealistically picturesque way, as the movies often do, but rather with the sort of jaded discovery that makes the places in the city what they are. Aiding this style is D.P. Jonathon Cliff’s humid, distinct way of shooting each location. In fact, I dare say that a momentarily-featured, blank doughnut shop exterior has more personality than either Michael or Tobey. The journey in Passenger Side is indeed far more interesting than the men taking it, and that’s reason enough why the movie doesn’t succeed. 2 Buckets out of 4; screens again on Thurs, Jun 25 at 4:30 p.m. at the Landmark.
Unfortunately, Day Two of LAFF didn’t prove much better than the first, but I’ll provide more on that later. Now, I must scurry off to Westwood for the pair of Day Three viewings on my slate.
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