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Sundance
Film Festival
is all heart
Byjami Bernard
Knight-Ridder Tribune
PARK CITY, Utah — Relation
ship movies set hearts on fire at the
Sundance Film Festival, which
wrapped Jan. 30th.
Fine Line and Lions Gate are
said to be duking it out over the
crowd-pleasing “Love and Sex.”
This semi-autobiographical laugh
a-thon by Valerie Breiman is based
on her (now-defunct) relationship
with filmmaker Adam Rifkin.
“Welcome to my sex life” is how
Breiman ruefully introduced it.
Rifkin, still a buddy*, later took a
bow for inspiring Breiman’s por
trait of a woman in search of a good
relationship, starring Famke Jans
sen and Jon Favreau. “I love doing
indie films,” said the slightly bulky
Favreau after the premiere. “It’s the
only place where I can get the girl. ”
“Chuck and Buck,” another re
lationship movie, quickly was sold
to Artisan for $1.5 million as one
of the first buys of the fest. Mike
White wrote the screenplay and
plays Buck, an overgrown kid who
can’t give up his crush on his
childhood friend. Director Miguel
Arteta (“Star Maps”) took a picture
of the audience to show his parents
“so they can start taking this film
making thing a little more serious
ly.’’The audience roared — it was
composed largely of struggling
filmmakers who also have been
told somewhere along the line to
get a “real” job.
Among me otner early iestivai
favorites on the verge of getting
picked up is “You Can Count on
Me,” a beautifully acted drama
about estranged siblings who affect
each other like the tides, starring
Laura Linney and Mark Ruffalo,
and yet another talented Culkin
child, Rory.
The documentary category has
also proved particularly inspira
tional this year, leaving audiences
in tears. In fact, you can’t see
“Legacy” without a full pack of
Kleenex.Filmmaker Tod S. Lend
ing followed one family around
the Chicago projects for five years
and documented their incredible
—w and ultimately winning —
struggle against poverty, drugs and
the vicissitudes of life. He began
filming coincidentally on the day
that one of the family’s most
promising children, 14-year-old
Tyrrell, was shot and killed by a
classmate on his way home from
school. Tyrrell’s sister provides the
narration for the movie, which is
both heartbreaking and immensely
uplifting, and she received stand
ing ovations wherever she went
here.
“The Sound and the Fury” is
also about a family's emotional
struggle — this time over the hot
potato issue in the deaf communi
ty of cochlear implants for chil
dren, a way to help them hear and
develop spoken-language skills. A
hearing mother and her adult deaf
son squared off on the issue, not
only in the movie but after screen
ings here as well. It’s an important
issue about a community that feels
immensely threatened by en
croaching technology.
Also on the ka-ching front: Fine
Line bought “Saving Grace” for a
rumored $4 million, with Blethyn
starring as a woman who grows pot
to reduce her debts, and lions Gate
bought “Two-Family House,”
about an oppressive Staten Island
household, starring the delightful
ly plain-spoken Katherine Narduc
ci of "The Sopranos.” Narducci
grew up at 116th Street and First
Avenue, and at the Premiere party
said that anyone reared in New
York will relate tp the movie. .