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About Just out. (Portland, OR) 1983-2013 | View Entire Issue (Feb. 17, 1995)
ju s t o u t ▼ fsb r u a r y 1 7 , 1 0 0 5 T 2 3 A W orld of O ptions . The 18th Portland International Film Festival unreels from Feb 17 to March 5 ▼ by Kelly M. Bryan P roduction deadlines, a snow storm, and as the perfect princess for his production of Wilde’s a particularly pernicious flu virus con Salomé. spired to keep me away from screen Byme encounters as much opposition to the ings for PIFF 18—the Northwest Film steamy play in 1963 Dublin, as Wilde did in 1892 Center’s annual Portland International London. The production risks being booted out of Film Festival. I only made it to one, that of the the lone church theater hall, and Byrne’s scandalized, Irish film, which leaves me in the same boat as moralistic landlord is fomenting disloyalty in the most people, having to rely on someone else’s cast. And the play is, in a sense, dangerous. Its opinion or optimistic program blurbs written by over-the-top sensuality sets a number of fuses someone who hasn’t seen the film either. With 52 alight, and one leads to Byrne’s own epiphany. It turns out that he’s hiding an Oscar Wilde-style costume in his closet—and a secret love for the handsome young driver of his bus. With fine performances by all of the actors, A Man o f No Importance is highly engaging, funny films from 34 countries to choose from, an interna and touching. Directed by relative newcomer Suri tional-cinema buff can get a little bleary-eyed Krishnamma, the film is a tad over sentimental at around this time of year. My recommendation for times, and treads some rather well-trampled lanes, but its several moments of fresh perception and its the best overall plan of attack: Stick with the obscure and the ones you can’t live without. Re message of simple acceptance make it a winner. member, many of the more popular films will be For deadpan humor I’m counting on the Finn back for theatrical runs. ish entry, Total Balalaika Show, by Aki Kaurismaki. It’s a sort of sequel to The Leningrad Cowboys Go As an indication that the year of the queer may America, which followed a band of low-talent, well be turning into the decade of the queer, this pointy-haired, would-be Elvises who come to tour year’s festival sports three films that focus on gay in the U.S., because we’ll listen to anything. This themes. The Cuban entry, also Cuba’s submission one is a concert film where the Cowboys—gigging with 100 singers, 40 musicians and 20 dancers (you may have seen them on the MTV Music Awards)— cover everything from “The Volga Boatman” to “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door.” I’m also looking forward to Kaspar Hauser, a retelling of the story first filmed in 1974 by Wemer Herzog, wherein a young man raised without human con tact appears in a German town one day in 1828 and becomes a local curiosity. Herzog’s movie, one of the first 1 saw that gave me hope of a cinematic world be yond the Terror of Tinseltown, left many questions and plot twists unexplored; the current version promises to delve into the politi cal intrigue behind the wild child’s bleak upbringing. A number of festival films this year deal with the changing roles of women, usually, but not always, within the confines of traditional marriage. Look for Albert Finney in A Man of No Importance Taiwan’s The Wooden Man's Bride', Iran’s Sara; China’s Red Firecracker, Green for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film, is Firecracker, which features a woman who’s been Strawberry and Chocolate, where the unlikely raised to live as a man to retain her family’s hold on friendship that develops between a fortysomething its fireworks business in the absence of a male heir, gay artist and the straight arrow political science and The Story o f Xinghua , Tunisia's Silences o f the student he tries to pick up is set against a backdrop Palace', the United States’ Picture Bride, about a of political and social repression and intolerance. Japanese woman who comes to Hawaii for an One of the three British films, Priest, takes on arranged marriage; and the Korean melodrama Catholic orthodoxy with the story of a young priest The Story o f Two Women, in which the conflict of assigned to his first parish, who finds that his two women who must share a husband turns to an newly minted ideas of right and wrong are sorely tested in the real world of human suffering and alliance. And several films offer rare chances for insight desire. Things get pretty dicey when he admits to into human struggles taking place in far-flung himself that he’s gay and goes out and finds him comers of the globe: love and war in the former self a lover; he also comes up against the dilemma Yugoslavia’s Vokovar Poste Restante, and the of the confessional when he hears of a father’s Macedonian-British coproduction Before the Rain, incest that he feels powerless to confront. the disappearance of pastoral ways of life in the In the Irish film A Man o f No Importance, Netherlands’ It’s Been a Lovely Day, and the Albert Finney plays middle-aged Alfie Byme, a ravages of cultural invasion on native populations man who has spent all of his attention on aesthetics in New ¡Zealand’s Once Were Warriors. and not bothered with love. He is a bus conductor obsessed with Oscar Wilde, whose passengers are Advance tickets ($6.50) and festival passes a rapt and captive audience to whom he recites ($90) are available from the Northwest Him poetry and of whom he has made an amateur Center, 1119 SW Park Ave., 221-1156; call theater group. One morning a beautiful and myste 225-5555, ext. 4734, fo r festival schedule. rious new commuter enters his bus, striking Byme PLUS SPECIAL GUEST Patéa M e ARLENE SCHNITZER CONCERT HALL Victoria William! ALADDIN THEATRE FRSS TO FIGHT RICORD RELEASE SHOW BIKINI KILL PHRANC TEAM DRESCH MARY LOU LORD & AZTECA X LALUNA Advance tickets at all Cl Joe s/Ticketmaster locations. Subject to service charge Charge by phone 224-4400 • n c ß trv / ij