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About Portland observer. (Portland, Or.) 1970-current | View Entire Issue (Feb. 24, 2016)
February 24, 2016 Black History Month Arts & ENTERTAINMENT Films to See Before PIFF Closes The regular schedule of the Portland International Film Fes- tival runs through Saturday, Feb. 27, and encore screenings will oc- cur on Sunday, Feb. 28. My favor- ite ilm so far has been “Thru You Princess,” an Israeli documentary about a beleaguered New Orle- ans singer who is discovered by a genius composer in Israel via her YouTube posts; though its festival run is over, I am really hoping that one gets a theatrical release. A bi- opic about Hank Williams, “I Saw The Light,” is also done with its festival run, but will get its theat- rical release soon, and though it takes a pretty standard approach to telling its story, it’s worth seeing for the ine performance of Tom Hiddleston as Williams and for its wonderful music. Three of the other ilms I’ve seen will have additional screen- ings at PIFF. “Dheepan” won the Palme d’Or award, the highest prize at the 2015 Cannes Film Festival, and expertly tells a tale of Sri Lankan immigrants to France. Its star was himself a child soldier with the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lan- o PinionAted J udge by J udge d arleen o rtega how to read the signs of danger in the housing project where the title character is assigned work as a caretaker. An excellent and im- mersive window into experiences common to immigrants that will play on Thursday and Friday, Feb. 25-26. I didn’t approach “A War” with much enthusiasm, but this Danish ilm, nominated for this year’s foreign language Oscar, has much to recommend it. Its irst half was much what I was expecting, depicting the day-to- day challenges faced by soldiers in Afghanistan and speciically by a young commander, alongside scenes of his young wife at home with their three young children, struggling with the strain of his ab- sence. What took the ilm beyond a standard exploration of war’s costs for soldiers and their fami- lies is the trial in its second half, ‘Thru You Princess,’ a documentary from Israel about an aspiring professional singer from New Orleans, gets a good review at this year’s Portland International Film Festival. ka who immigrated to France and is now an acclaimed playwright, essayist, and novelist. In his irst leading ilm role, he is riveting as a man whose departure from his home country depends on as- suming an acceptable refugee identity as a husband and father on the other side of the conlict he is leaving. The ilm lingers with an appropriate sense of disorien- tation, gradually revealing pieces of his story along with those of the woman and orphaned child who enter France as his family members. All three are lost in so many ways, including with each other, and this ilm is a wonderful example of showing rather than telling; we struggle with the char- acters to learn what is expected of them, who each of them is, and in which the commander stands accused of ordering an attack on civilians. That dilemma, coupled with what went before, illustrates well how easily civilian casualties occur during war, the challenges of meaningful oversight of such decisions, and how war turns even the best people (and audiences) into moral relativists. A cut-above most war ilms for its subtlety, this ilm plays on Thursday, Feb. 25 and Saturday, Feb. 27. “7 Letters” offers pretty slight entertainment from a slight prem- ise: seven writer-directors made short ilms marking Singapore’s 50th birthday. The stories are sweet, set in different periods, and in most cases sentimentally depict interesting aspects of the mix of cultures in Singapore, the passing of generations, and chang- es brought by modernization. I gravitate toward ilms with more depth, but this one is a gentle way to spend a couple of hours, and plays on Feb. 25 and 27. c ontinued on p age 14 Page 11
