WEDNESDAY, JUNE 9
SIFF
Monogamy
SIFF
The Wildest Dream
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7 p.m., SIFF Cinema
Monogamy
As his feature debut, writer/director
Dana Adam Shapiro, whose 2005
Murderball received an
Oscar nomination for best documentary, brings to the screen a languorous, intensely personal film about a boho, bearded
Brooklyn 30-something's marital cold feet. When photographer Theo's folk-singer fiancée lands in the hospital with a staph infection three months before they're to wed, he all but abandons her to embark upon a Pabst-fueled introspection bender. The leads are played strongly by
Chris Messina (
Vicky Christina Barcelona,
Greenberg) and
Rashida Jones (
Parks & Recreation,
I Love You, Man); the sad-bastard soundtrack strikes just the right chords; and the drama is unflinchingly authentic in its dialogue and urban aesthetic. But at times that authenticity threatens to grind to a halt what is, by design, a slow film, and Shapiro doesn't provide enough insight into his characters' backgrounds to raise them beyond fuzzily sketched archetypes. Still,
Monogamy is memorable for its emotional honesty. Shapiro's clearly been there, and Messina's performance is all the sturdier as a result. (NR)
MIKE SEELY (Also: 4 p.m. Thurs., June 10.)
THURSDAY, JUNE 10
4 p.m., Neptune
Along with Howl (see below), this film celebrates the Beat era, but from a very conventional documentary approach. It's narrated by Peter Weller, who starred in the 1991 adaptation of Burroughs' Naked Lunch. And, sorry to say, that film was a lot more fun than this dreary procession of film clips and talking heads. We're treated to all the usual encomiums from Patti Smith, Thurston Moore, Laurie Anderson, Gus Van Sant, John Waters, and company. But, really, what's the point? What more do we need to know about the late gay junkie WASP (1914–1997) that his own Junkie and public persona didn't communicate better? He was famous for a half-century, perhaps the most recognized gay icon of the pre-Stonewall era. And he dined on that image for decades, helped codify it with cameos as in Drugstore Cowboy. A Man Within merely adds more cement to the pedestal that Burroughs built for himself. "Do you want to be loved?" Allen Ginsberg asks in one clip. Burroughs' comeback is delivered with dry comic timing already perfected before the cameras: "By my cats, certainly." (NR) BRIAN MILLER (Also: Harvard Exit, 6:30 p.m. Sat., June 12.)
6:30 p.m., SIFF Cinema
It's probably inevitable that a biopic will be made about comic Bill Hicks (1961–1994), who achieved his greatest success shortly before cancer killed him. One wonders, however, how this caustic, skeptical Texan would've felt about his posthumous veneration. American, made by British directors Matt Harlock andPaul Thomas, gets uncomfortably close to hagiography. And Hicks was no saint. There's a cult around the performer, one that casts him as the only truth-to-power champion of the late Cold War era, as though he alone stood between Reagan and fascism. Naturally all his friends say Hicks was a genius; and testimonials from his family are moving. But American is most interesting when it doesn't argue for Hicks' profundity. Re-enactments and animated passages illustrate his early life; old family snapshots are rotoscoped, as in The Kid Stays in the Picture, to show how the teenager snuck out his bedroom window and onto Houston comedy stages. (Actual clips show a remarkably self-assured young artist.) Made with full family cooperation, American is candid about Hicks' L.A. burnout, drug abuse, and alcoholism, though more veiled about girlfriends who endured such behavior (none are interviewed). And his early '90s tirades about the Branch Davidian siege are tinged with Tea Party anger. He was ahead of his time in more ways than one. But take away the politics and outrage, and there's much laughter and delight here. My favorite bit is Hicks enacting the Shane shootout between Jack Palance and Elisha Cook Jr.: He's pure evil and pure innocence and purely convincing as both. (NR) BRIAN MILLER (Also: 11 a.m. Sat., June 12.)
7 p.m., Pacific Place
At 41, dopey Loy (Jacky Cheung) still can't get out of bed by himself in the morning—he lives with his aunt, who cooks and cleans for him, and works at the family's appliance store. Loy's mother (the astoundingly shrewish Paw Hee-Ching) sets him up with Oi-Lin (Lust, Caution's Tang Wei), the pretty niece of some customers. Problem is, Oi-Lin already has a boyfriend—Xu, who's in prison for battery and assault—and Loy is still hung up on his childhood sweetheart, a glamorous and recently divorced photographer. The two do, of course, end up falling for each other (they share a love of murder-mystery novels, for one thing). The lighthearted film has a number of charming, if not entirely original, moments. (Cue the rain machine as Loy runs in slo-mo toward his beloved.) But Crossing Hennessy—a remake of the 1988 rom-Jew-com Crossing Delancey—relies too much on stereotypes of Asian culture. The girl trying to resist an arranged marriage, OK. The late-blooming bachelor, fine. But Loy's shrill, overbearing mother is such a terror that the character is borderline unwatchable. As a bribe, she buys Oi-Lin's family dim sum and gives them a free humidifier. And if that doesn't work, she has an ultra-dramatic heart failure. For the sake of Loy and Oi-Lin, I found myself wishing worse consequences upon her. (NR) ERIN K. THOMPSON (Also: 1:30 p.m. Fri., June 11.)
