WEDNESDAY, MAY 25
SIFF
Just another commodity: Donor's Soriano.
SIFF
The clock is ticking for Simple Simon's Skarsgard (in foreground).
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[PICK] Perfect Sense 4:30 p.m., Egyptian
SIFF honoree Ewan McGregor previously worked with director David Mackenzie on the 2003 Young Adam, which featured frank sex, frontal male nudity, and a memorable gross-out scene with pouring paint and the trashing of an apartment. Would you be disappointed to know there's more of the same here? I think not. Perfect Sense might initially appear a parable—like the similar, inferior Blindness, in which the world's population mysteriously loses its sight. That punitive plague was because of our lack of social connection; blindness then brought us closer together, restored community. Here, a Glasgow chef (McGregor) and epidemiologist (former Bond girl Eva Green) are among those afflicted by a mysterious syndrome that begins with the loss of smell. One down, four to go. As the world turns to hell, however, a relationship gradually forms between the cook who can't commit and the doc afraid to love again. Sounds trite, but the film maintains an unlikely tone between black comedy and global tragedy. There are no lessons. As if by some Darwinian process of coping, the central duo and their city just keep adapting to diminished faculties. In one funny scene, after taste has gone, the chef's restaurant receives a rave review for the crackly sonic textures of its food. (Extra bonus: McGregor's old Trainspotting buddy Ewen Bremner has a comic supporting role.) BRIAN MILLER
[PICK] Donor6 p.m., Renton
Remember—not that you saw it—the horror flick Turistas, where spoiled, dumb-ass Americans had their kidneys cut out for black-market organ transplants? Made in the Philippines by native director Mark Meily, Donor is the more plausible, neorealist version of that same fear. Heroine Lizette dreams of a life abroad—perhaps to be a hotel maid in Dubai. But for the right paperwork and visa, she needs cash. It's only one kidney, right? She's not even a drinker, unlike her layabout gambler boyfriend Danny, who mooches off her incessantly. And she desperately wants to escape the video stall where a foreigner's request for The 400 Blows is mistaken for a porno. Meily trained in Paris as a director of commercials, and his bicultural perspective here recalls Maria Full of Grace. (Again, the female body is a vessel of trade.) Lizette (Meryll Soriano) knows she's doing something wrong, knows she's being exploited by larger economic forces, but what choice has she? Filipino law requires an arranged marriage to donate to a family member, yet her Arab "husband" Jasim is weak and pitiful, not to be despised (unlike gangsta wannabe Danny back home). Their sad courthouse ceremony, sealed with a courteous kiss, is a product of globalization. Under different circumstances, you realize, their vows might've been sincere. But they're forced to be buyer and seller, not man and wife. BRIAN MILLER (Also: Admiral, 6:30 p.m. Sat., June 4 and Harvard Exit, 4:30 p.m. Tues., June 7.)
A Screaming Man 6:30 p.m., Admiral
At 50, Chadian writer/director Mahamat-Saleh Haroun is old enough to have seen his homeland sink into carnage more than once. A Screaming Man is Haroun's war film—but, a man of minimalist proclivities, he speaks of national tragedy through the story of a swimming pool. Father Adam (Youssouf Djaoro) and son Abdel (Diouc Koma) are a team of pool attendants at a N'Djamena resort hotel. A former swimming medalist whom everyone still calls "champion," Adam is an employee of 30 years' standing, but corporate restructuring moves him to an undignified new post (shades of Murnau's The Last Laugh), leaving 20-year-old Abdel alone in the water. Adam recovers his job only when Abdel is forcibly inducted into the army, an event his father is ambiguously complicit in. There's no gunplay here; war is an ever-nearer offscreen horror, its first stirring coming through Adam's transistor radio, then a passing helicopter. A Screaming Man's story of economically enforced generational rivalry reflects the division—or rather, lack of division—of the burden of war between fathers and sons. The characterizations never comfortably accommodate Haroun's pat metaphor, though his stoic visual storytelling has an oblique gravity, suggesting a slightly altered meaning in each surveying shot of the poolside patio. NICK PINKERTON (Also: Pacific Place, 10 a.m. Sun., May 29.)
THURSDAY, MAY 26
Backyard4 p.m., Neptune
Árni Sveinsson's well-intentioned documentary begins with the bright idea of getting as many Reykjavík bands as possible to play in his backyard. It would have worked better as a straight concert film, without the extensive setup preceding the music. Hearing and watching some of Iceland's indie establishment—from fey folk and pop to screamo—is enjoyable. Reading subtitles about who's going to bring the drum kit and who's going to bake the snacks is not. Neither is reading still more subtitles about how a band called Mùm got its moniker. But patient and/or sentimental rock fans who get through the minutiae will definitely find something to love in sets from the likes of FM Belfast, Borko, and Reykjavík! CHRIS KORNELIS (Also: Admiral: 8:30 p.m. Sun., May 29.)
[PICK] Boy6:30 p.m., Renton
In New Zealand writer/director Taika Waititi's Boy, set in 1984, the title character is obsessed with Michael Jackson, whose Thriller album is in the midst of its run as a global phenomenon. Poor and being raised by his elderly grandmother alongside his younger brother and a houseful of cousins, Boy (James Rolleston) retreats into a world of fantasy that spills over into his real life and allows him to see his screw-up convict dad as a larger-than-life hero. The first act is filled with funny riffs on '80s pop culture, mercifully free of the cloying irony deployed by so many American films that draw from the same well. As the scales fall from Boy's eyes, the film glides into a register of heartbreak, powerfully underscoring the attraction of, and need for, escapist fare. ERNEST HARDY (Also: Neptune, 6:30 p.m. Sat., June 4 and 4:30 p.m. Mon., June 6.)
