THURSDAY, MAY 19
SIFF
Copacabana
SIFF
Apart Together
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The First Grader 7 p.m., McCaw Hall
Based on the true story of an 84-year-old Kenyan who took his government's "education for all" promise literally, The First Grader turns literacy into historical melodrama. Character is history in Justin Chadwick's dramatization of the story that made international headlines in 2003, a choice that gives the film a rough start. When a free primary school is opened in a remote Kenyan village, Maruge (Oliver Litondo), the recent recipient of a government letter he is determined to read for himself, shows up ready to learn. After being turned away by the bemused principal, Jane (Naomie Harris), and her prickly colleague, Alfred (Alfred Munyua), several times, Maruge finally gets to join the one-room schoolhouse when Jane relents. Word spreads almost immediately, and the villagers, having earned their freedom from British rule decades before, are paradoxically quick to lapse into greed and intolerance among themselves. Chadwick veers frequently into flashbacks to Maruge's past as a Mau Mau resistance fighter that do little to inform or propel the present-day story. Poorly defined tribal lines flare up, and Jane's life is threatened, the point at which the script's Hollywood contrivances open up and swallow this often charming film whole. MICHELLE ORANGE (The film appears at the Metro next week.)
FRIDAY, MAY 20
[PICK] Copacabana 4:15 p.m., Egyptian
Isabelle Huppert is such a fearless actress that you're willing to follow her anywhere, no matter that some of her key roles (The Piano Teacher, Time of the Wolf, etc.) have been very, very dark. Worry not: Copacabana is very, very light, though the comedy is rooted in the recession and real-estate bubble that hit Northern France just as hard as here. "Babou" (actually Elizabeth) is an aging and irresponsible bohemian, a former beach bum whose propriety-minded daughter decides to avoid embarrassment at her imminent wedding. Broke and defiantly anti-bourgeois, Babou finds herself off the guest list. Shocked and hurt, she takes a new job over the border in Oostende, Belgium, to sell time-share vacation condos. Totally unqualified and rude to almost everyone around her (save for a pair of young hippies living on the beach, as she once did), Babou sets herself up to fail. The surprise, as she navigates a new town, new trade, and new boyfriend, is what a survivor she turns out to be. Though her new office is like an all-female production of Glengarry Glen Ross, Babou learns to sell, to close deals, and not to scorn straight society quite so much. Granted, her corporate makeover is a ploy to get back in the good graces of her daughter (played by Huppert's daughter, Lolita Chammah). But more important for writer/director Marc Fitoussi, Babou's stubbornness represents a small, heroic gesture of resistance against the system. She's still got sand in her hair. BRIAN MILLER (Also: Admiral, 5:30 p.m. Sun., May 22 and Renton, 6 p.m. Tues., May 24.)
P3 7 p.m., Neptune
Tom Tykwer's new romantic triangle is a comedy with a genetic premise. One of its Berlin trio is a scientist who runs a gene-splicing company, where cell walls are routinely pierced and impregnated with new instruction sets. In this brave new world, 3 argues, biology is no longer destiny. Everything and everyone is mutable, and that includes the stale 20-year relationship between Simon and Hanna. Childless, unmarried, and infertile, they live in a bubble populated by fellow artists and intellectuals. New experiences are not to be expected until—enter the DNA probe—Hanna falls for enigmatic scientist Adam, who professes never to even read books. He lives alone in a sterile apartment, though his company profits from in-vitro fertilization for countless grateful couples. What comes next, as Hanna—astonished by her own actions—hooks up with Adam, and Simon suffers a health crisis, could've been treated as farce or tragedy. Fortunately, after a rather long, dull mid-career slump (Heaven, Perfume, The International), the German director of Run Lola Run has returned to form, using split screens, voiceovers, and fantasy sequences to advance his hybrid story. It's full of weighty ideas, yet is wonderfully light on its feet. "Life is unpredictable," admits control-freak Hanna (the perpetually exasperated Sophie Rois). And so is 3—or so Tykwer would like us to believe. (Cynics will easily guess how determinism is to be toppled.) Is 3's thesis convincing? No. But is it warm, funny, compassionate, and entertaining? Definitely. BRIAN MILLER (Also: 1:30 p.m. Sat., May 21.)
Black, White and Blues 7:30 p.m., Renton
Local actor Tom Skerritt has a small but significant role in this straightforward redemption drama, set among the blues clubs, churches, and pickup trucks of the rural South. The black guy (Michael Clarke Duncan of The Green Mile) is the mysterious redeemer who pilots the pickup truck. The white guy (co-writer Morgan Simpson), his passenger, is an alcoholic blues guitarist with terrible stage fright, lured from Austin back to Huntsville, Ala., by the promise of an inheritance. That windfall might allow him to repay an angry loan shark (a surprisingly feral and effective Luke Perry!). Then there's the matter of his scattered, hard-luck family and former hometown girlfriend, whom he abandoned long before. Do you doubt that every string of this guitarist's woeful life story will be plucked, held, and resolved? Can you foresee that the black and white guys might have a secret bond, that their fates might be bound by destiny—or perhaps even a higher power than that? Skerritt, playing a roadhouse owner called Santa, dispenses sage advice while conspicuously sipping water and tea. As his equally teetotaling protegé, Duncan embraces his savior role with gusto; if he could nail himself to the cross, he would. Though handsomely shot and capably directed by Mario Van Peebles (a long way from New Jack City), Black, White and Blues gradually reveals itself to be more intent on Sunday morning than on Saturday night. BRIAN MILLER (Also: Neptune, 4 p.m. Sun., May 22 and Everett, 3:30 p.m., Sun., May 29.)
