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About Just out. (Portland, OR) 1983-2013 | View Entire Issue (Nov. 16, 2001)
novembfif 16. 2001 • J h a t oart 49 FILM .... v........ Itoo treats (or clnephiles he River, the latest from acclaimed Taiwan ese filmmaker Tsai Ming-Liang, at first seems to reflect an almost unbridgeable cultural gap between East and West—or at least between Eastern and Western storytelling. by C hristopher M c Q uain It is meditative, meticulously paced and often nearly as slow and uneventful as real time. Those of us more accus both. He clearly doesn’t believe in the tomed to the cinema of the all-resolving epiphany, which would be United States, Europe or out of place here. even Asia (films from Hong Because of a print delay, The River Kong often are shot and was screened on video, a disaster for a edited so energetically as to Ming-Liang film. The beautifully framed make Die Hard look like My and carefully lit scenes (fortunately Dinner with Andre) might be familiar to this reviewer from having tempted to give up on The seen the director’s remarkable previous River, with its open-ended release, The Hole) were washed-out and narrative, crawling pace sometimes barely visible. Still, the prob and refusal to provide any lem served as a reminder of how crucial sort of emotional map to Ming-Liang’s austere visuals are to his guide the viewers response. films—and as an enticement to see The That would be a shame, River on glorious celluloid, where his though, because the film composed but never complacent vision does have a story to tell, and can be truly appreciated. although it requires pa- un*versal story in The River unfolds slowly tience and effort from the audience, it is as uni man comes down with an inexplicable neck . arbara Hammer, a legend of underground versal as any traditional three-act structure we’re pain that becomes increasingly unbearable but lesbian cinema, has been making films for used to seeing in the movies. cannot be cured by doctors or healers. Further decades. History lessons is her 75th work, W hat we’re witnessing in The River is simi odd occurrences— he is picked at random by a but there’s no musty venerability or overly rar lar to what Ang Lee, by far the most famous film director to play a dead body floating in a efied air of “art” about her collage of footage depicting or documenting lesbian behavior from polluted river, the father notices a leak in his Taiwanese director, showed us in the excellent The Ice Storm: a detached family living sepa bedroom ceiling from the apartment upstairs 1896 right up to pre-Stonewall 1969. Rather, it’s rately under the same roof like strangers. The an exhaustively researched, fascinating antho- and merely takes the stopgap measure of plac ing a bucket underneath it— seem to portend particular manifestations of dysfunction in this logical subversion of how lesbians have been household: The father escapes to gay bath impending disaster, or perhaps breakthrough. portrayed in mass culture since the cinema’s houses, the mother diverts herself through a The discomfiting conclusion (made even inception at the end of the 19th century. halfhearted affair with a pornography smuggler, more shocking by Ming-Liang’s decision to History Lessons opens with footage of Eleanor and their 20-something son drifts aimlessly. Roosevelt addressing a symposium of women, unfold it at the same deliberate, natural pace as Near the beginning of The River, the young the rest of The River) could be seen as either or ostensibly about equal rights. But the clip’s sound T New releases are worth the patience they require and reaction shots have been altered to suggest the first lady is inciting the audience to something akin to Sapphic revolution, a bit of jaunty irrever ence that sets the tone for the rest of the film. History Lessons is foremost a work of juxtaposi tion. Footage of early, primly earnest feminist polit ical rhetoric is followed with banal, male-narrated newsreel footage of “modem” women who can fly military aircraft but nonetheless retain their femi ninity by worrying about getting their hair wet. Interspersed throughout are randy clips of silent lesbian erotica, cheesy ’60s stag films, shots of cartoonish lesbian-themed pulp paperback cov ers and artistically intriguing Roaring '20s footage of lesbian flappers. These range from naughty to nasty to pornographic and feature women of many ages, sizes and backgrounds from throughout the first half of the 20th century vigorously enjoying what seems to be a wide gamut of sexual practices. Hammer doesn’t shy away from the horrify ing, either. The film contains footage, shot by Thomas Edison, of a lesbian being lynched. Some of Hammer’s more self-conscious, “post modern” montages are more strident than clever, ringing comparatively hollow and disrupting the already sufficiently significant flow of found images. Still, most of History Lessons comes off. As a whole, Hammer’s project has an innate historical value. It’s a uniquely thorough, eye- op»ening document of lesbianism as a motif in a typically unfriendly, unenlightened culture. J H C linton S treet T heater , 2522 S.E. Clinton St., screens The River Nov. 16 to 21 and History Lessons Nov. 23 to 28. For more information call 503-238-8899. 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