Vampires go artsy again in Xan Cassavetes' chic undead-fest, KISS OF THE DAMNED

Wow -- within a week we've viewed two examples of a brand of movie-making not seen all that often: the art/horror film. This sub-genre goes back, I suppose, to Nosferatu, a movie that was trying for horror (and succeeding) but was, by the by, also art. Most of the films in this sub-genre try for art and end up horrors (not always in the way the filmmaker had intended). The problem, most usually, is pretension, in which last week's eerie doppelganger movie, Mortem, took a bath. This week's example, KISS OF THE DAMNED, flirts with pretension but most often manages to hold back from going irretrievably over the brink.

Written and directed by Xan Cassavetes (shown at right and, yes, she's the daughter of John and Gena), the movie is her first try at full-length narrative. Almost a decade ago, Ms Cassavetes made the excellent and very entertaining documentary about the Southern California-based grand-daddy of pay-cable movie stations, The Z Channel: A Magnificent Obssession, and now she's back with this odd but interesting riff on vampire habits concerning eating, drinking, dating, sleeping, sexing, love, death and family. And after a little too arty a start, Cassavetes and her well-chosen cast settle down and pretty much deliver the goods.

Kiss of the Damned posits vampires living neck-in-neck, so to speak, with their human counterparts and behaving themselves well enough to get along and not arouse undue attention. (What do they deast on? Oh, deer!) When real love leaves its mark -- even vampires, it seems, can feel this force of nature -- our human hero (above and on top: the hunky and only a little clunky Milo Ventimiglia) and vamp heroine (above, bottom, and clearly chosen for something other than her looks, acting-talent or pronunciation of English, Joséphine de La Baume), must figure out how to handle the situation.

Unlike the tortured twats of the Twilight series, these characters are determined to fuck. So love finds a way, in a scene that is one of the movie's best and offers something a little different in the annals of chains and locks. This proves quite a fraught moment. "Uh-oh," you think: "Now what's gonna happen...?"

At a vampire soirée later on, we meet the more-or-less mother of this rather large group, a famous stage actress played by the always-terrific Anna Mouglalis (above, left), a performer skillful enough -- she played Coco Chanel opposite Mads Mikkelsen's Igor Stravinksy, after all! -- to convince us that she could be worshiped internationally while still adhering to the vampire lifestyle. That's right: She doesn't do matinees.

Into this rather ideal situation (for bloodsuckers, at least) comes the de la Baume character's little sister, a born troublemaker whose occasionally over-size teeth start causing a commotion. Played by Roxane Mesquida, above, who is always fun to watch and who does not disappoint here, Sis has a favorite activity: reminding these mostly tamped-down vampires about what they really crave. The little blond virgin (Riley Keough, below), for instance, is her surprise gift to our famous actress.

Also on tap -- in more ways than one -- is the usually fun Michael Rapaport as the Ventimiglia's character's agent (did I tell you Milo plays a famous writer?) who stops in to the old homestead for a chat with his client.

 
If Ms Cassavetes had only stuck more to her story and less to her "style," Kiss of the Damned would have been a better movie. In fact, she seems to do just this as the film moves along. Initially, though, it's pretty tough going. Talk about a roving camera: This one is all over the place! The film begins with a shot of a bird flying. Suddenly the camera backs up. To what? Nothing. We also get a clichéd sex-thru-the-fish-tank shot which the movie could easily live without. The filmmaker also seems to love very loud, twangy music, so occasionally you might want to cover your ears. Finally, the movie proves repetitious and "arty" enough to have lost maybe ten minutes of wasted space.

That first sex scene, however, is so good and so changes the lay of the land, that this alone may hook you. Ventimiglia is great to look at and so is Ms Mesquida, while Mouglalis impresses with her every moment. There is some occasional ironic humor, as well: After reading his writer's latest and very good work, Rapaport tells his newly minted vampire client, "Congratulations -- you finally joined the human race!"

Overall, I'd give this Kiss a passing grade; it's certainly more fun than not. From the Magnet Releasing arm of Magnolia Pictures and running 97 minutes, the movie opens this coming Friday, May 3, in New York City at the Sunshine Cinema and in West L.A. at the NuArt. You can find all currently scheduled playdates by clicking here. As with many of the Magnolia/Magnet movies, this one, too, is currently playing via VOD -- in case you'd like to sample from the comfort of your couch.

Miguel Gomes' stodgy, homage-y TABU opens at Film Forum: Of croc and schlock

I am guessing that the work of Portuguese filmmaker Miguel Gomes (previous output: four shorts, the widely heralded Our Beloved Month of August and his earlier The Face You Deserve) is an acquired taste. On the basis of his latest film, TABU, TrustMovies feels that he has not quite yet made that acquisition. Evidently a kind of homage to the work of early movie-maker F. W. Murnau -- even the poster images (the current film's is shown above, the older one's below) have a certain similarity -- Gomes' newest creation provides a not uninteresting combination of colonial critique (Portugal in Africa), forbidden love, the past and the present, and both old-fashioned and somewhat newfangled black-and-white cinematography.

But it all seems finally rather precious and not, I am afraid, that entertaining. At just under two hours, the film does go on. And as it does, the little life, mostly derived from the first half, set in modern day, drains out. The second half tells what ought to be a more interesting story of the love affair between the younger versions of the old woman and man we meet in part one.

But the filmmaker, shown at right, loves to dawdle and diddle, and so getting there, as they say, takes some time. Along the way, we're given story upon story that connect via countries and landscape (the jungle, the African plains and especially crocodiles, see below) that figure into just about every-thing concerning the past and in the dreams our char-acters have in the present.

We also get an early rock band from the period and some accompanying songs that are fun to hear again. While there is a certain "beauty" in much of the goings-on and in the often lovely black-and-white cinematography, the connections that would make for drama are so tenuous that little feeling for anyone or anything is generated. Some critics have called this "brilliantly nuanced," "mind-bending and utterly mysterious," but for me the result produced more than a whiff of... call it kitsch, schlock or camp, that made it impossible to take anything here all that seriously.

I wasn't bored by Tabu (I nodded off for a few seconds only once!) and I found myself taken with some of the characters: the cranky old woman (Laura Soveral, in photo at bottom) whom we see as a younger semi-femme fatale in Part Two; her kindly, ineffective neighbor Pilar (Teresa Madruga), shown below, at the cinema on a semi-date with a fellow who looks a bit like a sleeping Sondheim. If you were so inclined, you could call this one a semi-movie.

Also worth a look is the male lead in Part Two, Carloto Cotta (shown below and on poster, top, with Ana Moreira), as the youn-ger version of the old man we meet at the end of Part One. He is a stunner whose great beauty of face, body and hands ensures that the second section moves, if not quickly, more enjoyably.

So, yes, there are a number of things that make Tabu a forbidden pleasure. If only Mr. Gomes had been able to see that they coalesce more effectively. To my great surprise, the film has popped up on a 10-best list or two, which should at least ensure some kind of audience here in New York City.

To that end, the movie, an Adopt Films release, opens tomorrow, Wednesday, December 26, at New York's Film Forum for a two-week run. So see what you think, New Yorkers. To view all upcoming playdates around the country, click Adopt's web site here, then click on FILMS and then on TABU.

James Franco tackles gay poet Hart Crane in THE BROKEN TOWER. No one wins.

TrustMovies loves James Franco (shown on the poster at left and below). He loves to look at him and listen to him. He loves the guy's quirky intelligence and sometimes bizarre humor. He thought Franco's performan-ces in the underseen Howl and the much-seen Rise of the Planet of the Apes were both excellent. He admires the man's willingness to go out on limbs and engage with everything from life and higher education to film and soap opera and art installation and even... moviemaking. He thought Franco's 2009 five-minute short, The Feast of Stephen was somewhat interesting and certainly not awful. And now we have his new full-length THE BROKEN TOWER, which gives us a look at the life of the American poet of a century past, Hart Crane, which also proves to be somewhat interesting. But -- oh, gosh, how to put it nicely? -- this film is awful.

More than anything else, The Broken Tower, which Franco wrote (from Paul Mariani's biography and novel), directed, edited and stars in as Crane, reminds me of those would-be "art" movies we used to see back in the 1960s, which were probably indebted to the work of, if we had to single someone out, John Cassavetes, more than anyone else. These were black-and-white, shoestring budgeted (Franco's film has a bit higher budget than that), and intently focused on being artistic at all costs -- the biggest of which would be the almost complete annihilation of any possible entertainment value the movie might have possessed. (Cassavetes was better than this, but many of his acolytes were not.)

According to the press materials, The Broken Tower is actually Mr. Franco's New York University Film School "thesis" film, and as such it deserves, if not a grade, at least a pass or fail certificate. I might give it a pass, barely, with a grade of C-, and the suggestion that Franco center his ambitions back on acting. Arty and pretentious does not a good movie make. Watching the film, it seems as though the filmmaker may have been impressed with other black-and-white art movies such as Christopher Munch's Color of a Brisk and Leaping Day. But Franco does not yet understand what to do with the camera. He has it concentrate on typing and walking -- two very paltry actions that are not designed to interest the viewer past the first few seconds of screen time -- and worse, he likes to film the back of the head on those walks, as though something is about to be revealed.... by the hair, maybe?

And, oh, the sparkling dialog!  (I jest, because there practically is no dialog -- it's mostly title cards that key us into chapters from Crane's life. And then Franco repeats in action what has been told us by those cards.) As for the man's poetry, I cannot figure out if Franco imagines that, by reading aloud what sounds like an entire, lengthy and not very well-written poem, he is honoring Crane, or showing him up for the artsy twaddle the fellow created. It is certainly easy to understand why the man's poetry is not much remembered these days. (Still, before I "down" this guy's work, I should go to the source and trying reading some of it, rather than relying on what the filmmaker has presented.)

So why did Franco bother with making this film? It must have to do with Crane's homosexuality. One of the filmmaker's best scenes involves a blow-job, and I am not being funny about this: Franco does a good job of shooting the scene, of creating tension and release, and of giving us something to look at that seems both fresh and "felt." There's also a nice scene than has Crane, who worked as an advertising copywriter, trying out the sound of the word naugahyde -- a synthetic product which was evidently new at the time. But this, as so much else in the movie, goes on way too long. Otherwise, this mostly fledgling filmmaker keeps his camera to a tight frame on everything, in order, I would guess, to make the film look more "period" by including the necessarily detailed close-up, as above, but not expanding the view into scenes that would clearly call attention to modern times. (The good cinematographer is Christina Voros.)

In the cast, the biggest name is Michael Shannon (above right), who portrays a sailor for whom Hart has the hots. There's a nice lovemaking scene (three photos above), but Shannon is given so little to do that the use of an actor this good seems a bit wasteful. Also on view, as the younger Hart Crane, is Franco's brother Dave, who may actually be even more beautiful than his older sibling and director, and -- given the parameters of the movie -- makes a pretty good impression.

The entire film is in black-and-white except for a few moments that take place in a church. These are in color -- which calls to mind once again those artsy film duds from the 60s. Over all, and over its 99-minute running time, the movie acts as a kind of cinematic vacuum, sucking up energy like a black hole. I still love Mr. Franco and in fact will look forward to his next venture as a filmmaker -- but only with hope that he gives up trying to create "art" and decides instead to simply create -- come what may.

The Broken Tower opens today in New York City at the IFC Center in New York, and is simultaneously available via VOD. Consult your TV reception-provider to see if the film is being shown  on VOD in your specific area.