7 p.m., Uptown
Defamation
It's hardly news that manufactured outrage, whether from the left or the right, is a valuable fundraising tool. Gun control, abortion rights, global warming—any political cause can be converted into an ATM. Still, that doesn't stop Israeli filmmaker Yoav Shamir from assuming a faux-naive tone to follow the Anti-Defamation League and its controversial New York leader, Abe Foxman. Should we be surprised to learn that there's a whole "never forget" industry and curriculum, that there are school group tours to Auschwitz, and that, so far as hate speech impacts the ADL, "an increase sells!" (as Shamir puts it)? Not really. And Shamir's man-on-the-streets interviews in Brooklyn, where African-American tensions with the Orthodox community led to the 1991 Crown Heights riot, are shameful setups. Brothers hanging out on the corner in the middle of a workday aren't representative of the black community. Nor does Foxman—not treated like a complete buffoon—speak for all Jews. Defamation is mostly inside baseball—this faction versus that faction, American Jews are more touchy than their European counterparts, and so forth. Not a single Arab voice is heard. Then there's the pariah historian Norman Finkelstein, who calls the right-wing invocation of the Holocaust and anti-Semitism "a pretext or excuse to humiliate, degrade, or torture the Palestinians. The suffering comes in a package. Here is the suffering, now we take your land." Little in Defamation is expressed so plainly. (NR) BRIAN MILLER Also: Harvard Exit, 7 p.m. Thurs., June 11.
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7 p.m., Harvard Exit
Story of Jen
This is why I'm glad Lolita is only a novel. Fifteen-year-old Jen's father commits suicide, and his half-brother, Ian, moves in with widow and daughter in rural Quebec. And for nearly two hours (wrenchingly directed by Francois Rotger), we're shown just how damaged everyone is. Finally, Jen (the doe-eyed Laurence Leboeuf) gets a little too close (hint hint) to her too-doting uncle, in a nonconsensual kind of way (hint hint hint). A Dangerous Game–style manhunt then follows, leading to a scene that could've sprung from the mind of Cremaster creator Matthew Barney. But Rotger is no Barney (nor Nabokov, for that matter), and though our heart breaks for Jen, Story of Jen is more powerful than artful. Jen's suffering just goes on and on and on. During the movie's nearly two-hour run time, I found myself thinking that I could've watched the new Wallace & Gromit short four times instead. (NR) LAURA ONSTOT Also: 4:30 p.m. Thurs., June 11.
9:30 p.m., Pacific Place
El General
Memoirs by the grown children of dictators and disgraced politicians are only going to be fun or interesting if published, or filmed, close to the events at hand. Natalia Almada's documentary is three generations removed from her great grandfather, a Mexican revolutionary and strongman who ruled that country in the '20s and '30s. Beyond still photographs and some evocative home movies, her primary source is her dead grandmother, who left extensive audiotapes for a book of her own (never written, and which Almada is in a sense completing with this film). For students of Mexican history, this will be interesting. For the rest of us, Almada tries to provide topicality with man-on-the-street interviews about Mexico's ongoing social inequity. ("We're still fighting for the same thing.") It's video padding on a project that lacks outside sources and any clear editorial voice on Almada's part. The film needs a strong guiding hand, such as El General himself might've provided. (NR) BRIAN MILLER Also: SIFF Cinema, 11 a.m. Sun., June 14.
9:30 p.m., Uptown
Summer
I was hoping, after I Know You Know, that Robert Carlyle was coming to SIFF this year. If not, after Summer, I can't say his absence will be a great disappointment. He does his best playing Shaun, the mid-40s caretaker of his childhood best friend, Daz, left paraplegic after an accident that Summer, among its many flashbacks, will inevitably reveal. There are three sets of Shaun and Daz actors, and all speak with the same thick regional accents that make the emotionally affecting Summer, to us, somewhat impenetrable. (Subtitles? Hello?) The movie is set in the East Midlands. But really, what does that mean to us American SIFFgoers? Are these Midlands worse than the North or South or West Midlands? It's all the same rural proletarian misery, whether in Ireland, Wales, or Scotland. Summer is but a minor variation on that theme. Young Shaun was dyslexic, we learn, and fell in love with the smart, beautiful Katy (ultimately Australian actress Rachael Blake), before tragic events tore them apart. The movie's dramatic crux lies in Thatcher's deregulated '80s, when England's youth either did or didn't make the cut to university education and a free-market economy. Two decades later, neither Shaun nor Katy seems happy with what side they're on. Yet England—wherever the East Midlands may be located—soldiers on. And as ever, Carlyle gives his side a bruised, tender dignity. (NR) BRIAN MILLER Also: 9:30 p.m. Sun., June 14.
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