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About Just out. (Portland, OR) 1983-2013 | View Entire Issue (Nov. 21, 2008)
film Let The Right One In Tru Loved Tenebrous, occasionally gruesome, but with moments of arresting beauty, this Swedish miracle breathes new death into the vampire cliche. Oskar, a cherry-lipped, snow-haired schoolboy bullied by his peers, becomes enamored of Eli, a strange girl who moves into his building. She can scale walls like Spider-Man, can solve a Rubik’s Cube with hardly an effort and seems to have a thirst for human blood. There is something “queer” about their warped love story, especially when you consider that Eli (who says, “I am not a girl” more than once) may represent Oskar’s revenge-fantasy versitin of himself. Now playing at Cinema 21. A —Tony LeTigre Writer/director Stewart Wade’s Tru Loved became a cause célèbre after a recent review by Roger Ebert, who trashed it with a one-star rat ing based on watching a mere eight minutes of a DVD screener. The resulting uproar triggered some lively discussions on Ebert’s blog about the ethics of film critics. But maybe the laugh is on him. Despite his negative attitude toward it, the controversy has no doubt benefited the film by calling so much attention to it. Some of Ebert’s mistakes based on reading the Internet Movie Database (like saying Bruce Vilanch played two characters) have also given Tru Loved a bit of a David vs. Goliath patina. Readers who followed the debate but have ac tually seen the film may wonder what all the fuss was about, particularly Ebert’s inexplicable charge (based on a stylized opening fantasy sequence) that Tru Loved is an incompetent film. A full viewing shows that, while it is no masterpiece and surely has its problems, the film is not just profes sionally made, but an often winning mix of com edy, drama and social commentary, making up in heart what it lacks in subtlety. (Ebert’s charge of incompetence is a curious one not echoed in the mostly positive reviews from The New York Times, Variety and other major venues.) Tru Loved opens with a witty sequence that introduces some of the characters via a sendup of 1950s Leave It to Beaver-type sitcoms. The main character is 16-year-old Tru (Najarra Townsend), who’s just relocated with her two moms from tolerant San Francisco (where her two gay dads live) to intolerant Los Angeles suburb Agoura Hills. Not unexpectedly, Tru quickly encounters her new school’s homophobia (internalized and otherwise) in the form of queer-baiting football player Manny and his equally ignorant coach, a queeny literature teacher who pretends he’s not gay and closeted jock Lodell (Matthew Thomp son). Lodell inducts her into his clique but has an ulterior motive: He is terrified of being discovered and needs a beard. Tru is too sweet to say no, de spite the fact that it goes against all her beliefs. Things get more complicated as the pressures of Lodell’s closet increases, and the film hits the bull’s-eye in scenes where he mortifies Tru by overacting the role of straight Romeo at her ex pense. Tru and a queen named Walter start a Gay Straight Alliance, Tru hooks up with a straight boy, and the plot twists—including a gay-bashing Quantum of Solace Daniel Craig, the latest* (and sexiest) of the James Bonds, has been airlifted into a thoroughly mundane movie. One expects the plot of a Bond film to be incomprehensible. But one also expects the latest in gadgetry, chase scenes that thrill and passionate sparks between Bond and his bimbo du jour. Here, as with the special effects, there is nothing particularly new, fresh or exciting. This sequel to Craig’s first Bond incarnation, the ter rific Casino Royale, is a losing hand. C —Floyd Sklaver Tru Loved is both a convincing message movie about living authentically. Auto, Home, Life, Health & Business "Your Independent Insurance Agency " epb&Jb insurance Elliott, Powell, Baden sequence—continue up to the end. Tru Loved is both a convincing message movie about living authentically and a diverting entertainment. Townsend is totally credible as Tru, while Two Indian women in 1950s South Africa fall in love against a Thompson nails the background of pervasive racism in The World Unseen. difficult role of a well- intentioned, somewhat desperate boy whose secret tom by remaining stubbornly single and not really takes its toll on others besides himself. Eagle-eyed bothering to hide her lesbianism; she also under viewers will spot Star Trek’s Nichelle Nichols cuts South Africa’s racist laws by owning her cafe as Lodell’s sassy grandma, and real-life queer in name only and operating it equitably with an superstars David Kopay and Jane Lynch appear in older black man, Jacob, as if he were a co-owner. cameos. Less effective are Tru’s various parents, The women’s mutual attraction is expo unable to make their underwritten roles seem nentially complicated by circumstance and real. Also questionable is the amount of music sociopolitical environment. Miriam’s husband on the soundtrack, which sometimes overwhelms cheats on her with impunity but expects her key scenes in bombast. Still, this is ultimately to be a dutiful, docile and faithful wife—a an earnest, affecting effort that deserves—and double standard that the film implies was com rewards—a viewing, preferably complete. mon and expected by a married couple of their Opens Nov. 21 at Hollywood Theatre. B + time, place and class. Slowly but surely, how —Gary Morris ever, circumstances and emotions wear down Miriam’s endemic conformity until she is able Twilight to take a small but sure step toward her own Twilight is here! And it’s not very good! A thor identity. oughly uninteresting cast of bloodlessly pretty, The love story between Miriam and Amina pale-skinned near-teens sleepwalks through a ter takes place against a background of pervasive rible script, lacking intensity, honesty, thrills or police brutality and racism, and the film takes surprises. New superstar Robert Pattinson hasn’t a good, hard look at a system that might grant got the skills to depict immortal lust and make it certain privileges to one minority group (Indi believable, and possibly talented Kristen Stewart ans) that it denies to another (blacks) in order just seems to be on a high dose of cold medicine. to keep them divided and suspicious of each A truly boring and yawn-inducing film, Twilight other. In addition, the film’s parallel love sto can only be recommended for fans (of which there ry—a sweet autumn-years attraction between Jacob and a postmistress, an anti-segregation are plenty), children or viewers for whom chaste, ist white woman—is choked by the poisonous tell-don’t-show romance trumps quality. D —Jemiah Jefferson atmosphere of South African race relations in the 1950s. Sheth is vibrant as sassy, liberated Amina, The World Unseen but Ray is particularly remarkable as a woman Adapted with a surprisingly strong visual sen sibility from her 2001 novel of the same name, di who is truly torn between familiar oppression and a freedom so unthinkable that it frightens rector Shamim Sharifs The World Unseen focuses her. The film’s happy ending is graceful, absent of on a community seldom explored on film: Indians grandiosity or too much finality. It offers genuine who lived in South Africa under British rule and reassurance, convincingly suggesting that one apartheid. The film is set in 1952, when Indian small individual action, while not a panacea, can wife and mother Miriam (Lisa Ray) is confused be rhe difference between hope and despair. and exhilarated by the freedom of restaurateur Opens Nov. 21 at Living Room Theaters. B Amina (Sheetal Sheth), another Indian woman. —Christopher McQuain © Amina defies the sexist strictures of Indian cus RAIN’S COMING! PALM SPRINGS is calling! Beautiful Desert °’sis Baker, In*. 354 D ays of S un • W inter H i T emps 65-82 G ay C ommunity is 40% of P alm S prings ' population D inah S hore LPGA W omen ' s E xtravaganza W hite P arty - M en ' s A nnual B low O ut G olf • T ennis • S wimming • H iking (all SUE FERGUSON, R ealtor Yjur California Connection' MARC BAKER Downtown Portland (503) 227-1771 • www.epbb.com »13 <-> ra £) Windermere imiBlf HOMES £ CONDOS at imißlf PRICES '
