7 p.m., Harvard Exit
The Headless Woman
I'm a big admirer of Lucrecia Martel's La Ciénaga, which played Seattle in 2002 (and which SIFF will screen at the Harvard Exit, 11 a.m. Sat., May 30). Her latest also centers quite frankly on an exhausted Argentine woman of a certain age, one who's trying to keep up appearances despite the world crumbling around her. Driving home from the country, Verónica (María Onetto) looks down at her ringing cell phone and—bump!—hits something in the dusty road. She stops none too quickly, looks in the rearview mirror (we can't tell what that thing is, either), and drives on. It looks like the opening to a crime or blackmail movie, but Martel has other ideas. The home life and profession of Veró appear in fragments: She's bourgeois, has servants, possibly a husband, lover, and kids. Mainly she worries about her blonde hair, the humidity, and what a mess her gardener is making in the yard. Though gradually it emerges that Veró, a dentist, may have a conscience. And still more gradually that no one wants her to use it. Martel's storytelling can be frustratingly opaque, yet it fitfully sketches a kind of moral journey. And Onetto, who shares some of Joan Allen's stern beauty, keeps us watching. Even when you can't tell what's happening with the movie, you can see something happening within her. (NR) BRIAN MILLER Also: 1:30 p.m. Sat., May 30.
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9:30 p.m., Uptown
There are some things a man never wants to see. His child posing in Hustler. His home in flames. And Daniel Auteuil, one of the best French actors of all time, wearing a wifebeater and headband and throwing signs at his homies. In Daddy Cool, Auteuil plays a famed biochemist who returns to France from the States, where he has lived for 15 years, to spend three months taking care of his 15-year-old daughter (Juliette Lamboley). He thinks it's going to be a snap; she thinks he's a shit. Oh, the hilarity! The only thing that differentiates Daddy Cool from American teenage-girl flicks like American Girl and The Princess Diaries is the fact that directors François Desagnat and Thomas Sorriaux don't fig-leaf teenage sexuality. Otherwise it's pure Hollywood: Plug in the requisite wacky neighbors, the hot unattainable guy daughter Églantine's crushed out on, the equally hot male friend with a secret crush on her, a love interest for Dad, and a band called Black Sperm, and calculate the plot trajectory. Even your own 15-year-old won't be surprised. (NR) JONATHAN KAUFFMAN Also: 4:30 p.m. Tues., June 2 and Admiral, 4 p.m., Sun., June 7.
9:30 p.m., Pacific Place
Know Your Mushrooms
No, don't. And neither does this inane documentary by leftie director Ron Mann (Grass) know anything significant or new about fungus. Mainly it follows a couple of graybeard hippies to the Telluride Mushroom Festival, where these mycology experts spew a few random facts, lead classes, get stoned, and wake up on the lawn. The snickering psychedelic subtext overwhelms everything else: Shrooms are natural and good and should be legalized! Stick it to the man! Lip service is paid to using one variety of fungus to clean up oil spills, but no outside scientists appear to verify this or any other claim made in the film. It's a movie made by and for fungus partisans. If you'd like a little help with actual mushroom recipes, their nutritional value, what variety to buy—organic or otherwise—at Safeway or Uwajimaya, or how resource-intensive they are to grow compared to other crops, this film has absolutely nothing to teach you. (Other than: Avoid Telluride during Mushroom Fest.) Try the cooking section of your local bookstore instead. Note: Mann is scheduled to attend both screenings. (NR) BRIAN MILLER Also: Uptown, 1:30 p.m. Sun., May 31.
9:30 p.m., Harvard Exit
PICK: The Overbrook Brothers
As indie road comedies go, John Bryant's The Overbrook Brothers is about perfect. Centered on a bombshell familial revelation that forces two quarreling adult brothers into a used Lincoln and on the long road from Colorado to Texas, virtually every scene belongs to Mark Reeb, who plays Todd, the chief egger-on of the sibling pair. Reeb so nails his hilarious character that the movie's only real shortcoming is that it isn't 20 minutes longer, to give Reeb more room to run. That's not to take anything away from Nathan Harlan, the more subdued, artsy brother, Jason, who can't help but stoop to Todd's level time and again. In both looks and deadpan demeanor, Harlan is reminiscent of Jason Bateman, the ultimate comedic straight man (who's usually funnier than his not-so-straight collaborators). If there's any justice in the cinematic world, Reeb and Harlan's pairing will go down as one of the greatest of its genre. The film's climactic scene also features one of the more originally shocking penile gross-out sequences ever captured onscreen. (NR) MIKE SEELY Also: Pacific Place, 3:45 p.m. Sun., May 31.
Saturday, May 30
11 a.m., SIFF Cinema
PICK: Wallace & Gromit in "A Matter of Loaf & Death"
Presented as part of the "Family Picture Show" package of shorts (other programs play SIFF Cinema all weekend), the latest claymation charmer from Aardman Animations is definitely worth the early wakeup call. Cheeky pun-filled fun, the half-hour adventure has our heroes encounter a serial killer! And this secret menace is dispatching all the town's bakers, just as our boys' new business, Top Bun, is, ahem, rising. What will they (forgive me) dough about it? Ever-unflappable Gromit is silently disapproving (as ever) when Wallace thinks he's found love. Add to that a hot-air balloon, a bakery assembly line run out of control, and Wallace's eventual declaration that "I've got a bomb in me pants!" (A line that should be used at least once in every movie.) A spirit of old Ealing Studios murder comedies runs through Loaf & Death, but some things never change. Among the old cassette tapes in the lads' delivery van is—get ready for it—The Hound of Music. (NR) BRIAN MILLER
