7 p.m., Egyptian
Hidden Diary
When pregnant Audrey (Marina Hands) returns from Canada to visit her French hometown, she receives a frosty welcome from her mother, Martine (Catherine Deneuve). Audrey opts to stay at her recently deceased grandfather's house, where she finds the hidden diary of her long-lost grandmother, Louise. Family lore has it that Louise abandoned her husband in the '50s while her kids were young and was never heard from again. Naturally Audrey decides to investigate. Directed by Julie Lopes-Curval, Hidden Diary is very much a woman's film (released in France as Mères et filles, or mothers and daughters). Audrey wants to imagine her grandmother as a brave, liberated woman, doing things that weren't done—taking English lessons, learning photography, riding the bus alone. Quel scandale! Martine sees things differently, saying, "Our mother left because she was heartless, not to be free." Deneuve is marvelous as the cold, testy mother; her scenes with Hands (Lady Chatterley) are visceral and effective. ("No wonder you're alone," Deneuve snaps. "Who could stand you?") By contrast, weird vignettes in which Audrey imagines herself meeting her dead grandmother (Marie-Josée Croze) don't work at all. Feminism? Forget about it. There's a mystery to solve, and Hidden Diary forgoes deeper inquiry to find where the bodies are buried. (NR) ERIN K. THOMPSON (Also: 11 a.m. Sat., June 5; Neptune, 4 p.m. Thurs., June 3.)
Castaway on the Moon
City of Life and Death
Details
Seattle International Film Festival Thurs., May 20—Sun., June 13. Tickets and schedule: 324-9996 and
siff.net. Or visit box office at Pacific Place (second floor, 11 a.m.-7 p.m. Mon.-Sat. and noon-6 p.m. Sun.).
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7 p.m., Harvard Exit
Ahead of Time
Like any journalist, I'm a sucker for films about journalists, and Ruth Gruber's long career in print would make any writer envious. She started freelancing in 1935, hitching a ride to the Arctic with the Soviets and filing regular reports for The New York Herald-Tribune. A Brooklyn-born prodigy who got her Ph.D. in Nazi Germany, she later worked for both Life and the Roosevelt administration, and also covered the Nuremberg trials and the violent birth of Israel. (Her book Haven, about Holocaust refugees, became a 2001 TV miniseries.) And now, pushing 100, she's alive and lucid when interviewed by director Bob Richman, who skillfully interweaves old stills, home movies, and newsreels to document such an eventful life. She was—and is—plainly a creature of the progressive Jewish left, an advocacy journalist of the sort who fell out of favor during the McCarthyite '50s. But—no matter, no bitterness—she married at 40 and started a family. Today she speaks at synagogues and to young female journalists. "Did you meet Hitler?" one marvels. No, but she heard him speak live at a rally, which today seems just as remarkable. (NR) BRIAN MILLER (Also: SIFF Cinema, 4:30 p.m. Thurs., May 27.)
9:30 p.m., Pacific Place
Like You Know It All
Selfish, socially awkward, and prone to blurting out the wrong thing after too much booze, film director Ku is an unflattering alter ego for Hong Sang-soo (Woman on the Beach). Far from his Seoul comfort zone (where one suspects his trespasses are forgiven too easily), Ku travels first to a rural film festival and next to a film school on a small island. Fancying himself a big fish, eager to be flattered and impress women, he abuses his hosts and shames himself at every turn. Was he once an ass-kisser, too? He's eager to forget those old days—until he meets an old mentor and reverts to acolyte mode. Was he once a loyal friend? "The frog can't remember his tadpole days," Ku muses in voice-over, at least partly aware of his shortcomings—though not willing to correct them. And on both his small-town visits, his mistakes tend to repeat themselves. (The two episodes are parallel, but don't cohere into a movie.) Called "depraved" and "a skirt-chaser," he nearly ruins one happy marriage by doing nothing; yet the results are more comedy than crisis when he beds another bored wife (Go Hyun-jung, from The Actresses, above). "Promise me you won't make a film about me," she asks. Fat chance. (NR) BRIAN MILLER (Also: 6:30 p.m. Wed., May 26 and 3:30 p.m. Fri., May 28.)
