PLANTS: Roberto Doveris explores voyeurism, sex, coming-of-age and the vegetative state -- in an oddball Latin American series at AFA

Despite New York City's being a place in which -- even though Los Angeles/Hollywood claims to be the film capital of the world -- one could always see more international cinema, new or classic, than anywhere else in the USA, because this world-cinema capital regularly misses out on certain perhaps important movies that have garnered acclaim at international festivals or in their home country, Cinema Tropical and NYC's Anthology Film Archives (AFA) are joining forces to help remedy this -- so far as Latin American film are concerned, at least -- with monthly screenings, the last of which (for now) takes place tomorrow, Thursday, December 14, at 7:15 pm at the AFA, in a series, entitled charmingly and lengthily, If You Can Screen It There: Premiering Contemporary Latin American Cinema NYC. 

This final offering in the series is a Chilean movie from first-time filmmaker (who also edited his film and perhaps had a hand in the writing of it, too, but I can find no accreditation for its screenplay), Roberto Doveris, shown at left, entitled PLANTS (Las plantas). In it, a young girl, Florencia (newcomer Violeta Castillo), who appears to be in transition from adolescence to womanhood, undergoes some very bizarre experiences, feelings, ideas and reading material. The latter, a book (or maybe a comic) entitled Las Plantas, is the story of sentient plants who take over their human nurturers at night (or maybe only during the full moon: things are not always too clear here), to which our heroine becomes rather addicted, to the point at which we wonder if she herself is not imagining this story to actually be happening to her. Or not.

Meanwhile, she has the care of her comatose brother Sebastian, a very hot-looking sleeping beauty (Mauricio Vaca, below, right), whom she bathes and cares for and whose diaper she changes, all in a manner than seemed to me pretty unbelievable. (Are comatose patients so easily managed at home, while being left along for hours upon end?). Florencia's other interests range from choreography and dancing with two male friends to combing the internet for possible sexual partners.

The one she finds -- we watch, as do Florencia and her pals, as he jacks off  online and later in person through her glass doorway, above -- proves to be another very hot young man, older and more experienced than our girl, but ready for some nice hard-core action. The actor, Ernesto Meléndez, has a handsome face, a good body and proves very well-endowed in the dick department (hard and soft), so for these couple of scenes alone, the movie may be worth some viewers' time. In any case, Señor Doveris once again suggests that hard-core moments can easily be shown in an otherwise dramatic/comedic film without the world of culture coming to a sudden end.

Florencia also has a mother, above, who is ill (or doing a good job of feigning, as another relative suggests), and our poor girl has clearly been saddled with too much responsibility, though in almost all matters save those sexual, she is quite willing to slough things off much of the time.

Doveris is concerned here, among other things, with coming-of-age, sexuality, the vegetative state (of both plants and humans), and storytelling, together with its ability to entrap us. He even flirts with a touch of animation, as above, along the way. His skills include some visually stunning scenes in which color (bright lavender and pale green), composition and camerawork (by Patricio Alfaro) come together in stunning manner; and his ability to slowly reveal the who, what, why and how of his characters and their connection is a plus, as well.

The big problem is that, beyond all this, he is unable to actually join his themes and ideas into anything more than vaguely coherent. Nothing comes home to roost. We understand what he wants his movie to be about, but that's not the same thing as actually achieving it. Beyond this, the decent acting, and the hot and fun sex scenes, Plants amounts to mostly a big shrug. The movie certainly shows promise, however, so we'll look forward to Doveris' next endeavor.

Meanwhile, this one plays just one time in New York City at AFA tomorrow, December 14, at 7:15pm. Click here for tickets and/or further information.

Kevin Pollack directs his first -- and pretty funny -- narrative film, THE LATE BLOOMER

An actor TrustMovies has enjoyed quite regularly down the decades, Kevin Pollack (a fellow with 126 IMDB acting credits to his name), has now directed his first narrative movie -- not surprisingly a comedy, given this guy's background -- and it is one that, while sometimes crass, is always pretty funny, too. Titled THE LATE BLOOMER, it details the story, said to be "almost" true, of a young man who, due to an un-diagnosed medical problem, has never experienced puberty and therefore no sex nor even sexual desire.

Based on the memoir by Ken Baker, originally published back in 2001, and screen-written by some five different scribes, Mr. Pollack's movie (the director is shown at right) has such an unusual, grab-you-by-the-throat story to tell that it very nearly works via its odd tale alone. It's that bizarre-but-believable. Well, it ought to be, as the medical condition explained here actually happened to Mr. Baker, as it has to others. It may be rare, but it is also there. And it must be dealt with.

While I have not read Baker's memoir, from what I've heard about it, the book is quite moving as it brings the reader into the feelings of this man-boy so utterly inexperienced in much that we consider vital in life.

The movie, not exactly unexpectedly, plays all of this for laughs. To its credit, it gets quite a lot of them, too. Star Johnny Simmons, above, with his sweet face and goofy-but-sexy quality, seems a very good choice for the lead role. He's believable and funny as a grown guy only just discovering what most of us found years ago. If he doesn't wrench your heartstrings, too, that simply does not seem to be required here.

Supporting Simmons are a bevy of good performers who fill their roles just fine but are, with a couple of exceptions, not required to do much more. These include Maria Bello and J.K. Simmons (shown above, left and right), as our boy's parents, and Brittany Snow (below) as the pretty (and very literal) girl-next-door.

Jane Lynch (below) portrays Simmon's mentor, while Kumail Nanjiani and Beck Bennett (two photos below, shown respectively at right and left) play his two best, though not very bright, friends,

with Paul Wesley (shown at left in photo at bottom) as the other, and not very nice, man in his would-be girlfriend's life.

While the movie concentrates most of its humor and events on things sexual, which are generally funny if sometimes a little too crassly perceived, when it takes off into other area of adolescent trauma -- everything from acne to vocal changes to tantrums towards one's parents (the latter is maybe the film's funniest scene, in which Mr. Simmons excels) -- it proves even more on-the-mark.

At times, and at its most enjoyable, The Late Bloomer almost seems like a more "real" version of one of those popular body-jumping fantasy movies like Freaky Friday, Big  or 13 Going on 30 -- in which our hero or heroine suddenly inhabits the body of someone of a very different age.

If the film skirts over feelings to land more laughs, well, that's what movies tend to do, right? And at least this one manages to garner an awful lot of those laughs. From Momentum Pictures and running around 90 minutes, The Late Bloomer opens tomorrow, Friday, October 7, in "select" theaters (for instance, twice daily at NYC's Cinema Village and at Laemmle's Music Hall 3 in L.A.) while simultaneously making its debut on VOD and digital HD.

THE MOTH DIARIES: Mary Harron's back, with a taste of girls-school melo-horror

You've heard of melodrama, right? A kind of drama-lite that can still be quite entertaining. Now, the sometimes noted filmmaker Mary Harron (on the plus side, I Shot Andy Warhol and American Psycho; on the more middling, The Notorious Bettie Page) has come up with something I'd call melo-horror. Her newest film THE MOTH DIARIES is now-and-then scary but it also, quite deliberately I suspect, fudges the horror to arrive at something, well, a lot more perverse: a stew of incipient fright, friendship, (very) late adolescence, lesbian love/schoolgirl romance, family loss and maybe budding psychosis. None of which jells but all of which maintains at least passing interest.

Ms Harron, shown at right, teases us with all of these ingredients, and she and her excellent casting department (Kerry Bardem, Paul Schnee and Rosina Bucci) have peopled her movie with a nice array of young talent, most of whom I don't recall having seen previously but who certainly make up an interesting assortment of schoolgirls worth watching and rooting for (or against). The exception -- an actress whom I have seen several times, and who always seems different, and I mean hugely different, from role to role -- is young woman named Lily Cole.

Ms Cole (above and at left) is a chameleon of sorts. Recall her, if you can, in films as diverse as her debut (St. Trinian's) or her most amazing role (in Sally Potter's Rage) to The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus and one of the worst Spanish Civil War movies ever (There Be Dragons). Yep: They're all with Ms Cole. Either she's quite the (not so) little actress, or her directors sure know how to use her properly. Ms Harron does, too.

Cole's role is that of Ernessa -- not the film's protagonist: That would be Sarah Bolger, above, as Rebecca -- the "new girl"/catalyst who comes to the school and appears to change everything. Or maybe not. Part of the oddness (and I admit it, the fun) of the film comes from the fact that things may not nearly be what they seem to our protagonist, who has suffered a major loss and may not be bouncing back from it quite as well as she thinks.

There are sub-plots aplenty -- a helpful or not teacher (Scott Speedman, above) and the various special problems of several of the students -- and even more subsidiary characters to follow, yet none of these are brought to much fruition. Instead we concentrate on Ernessa and her maybe other-worldly powers. And while Ms Cole proves a worthy vessel for our concentration, the mashup of possible horror with the pangs of adolescence and family trauma doesn't finally amount to much: too few scares and/or special effects for the horror crowd, but not enough depth and intelligence for the serious set.

The Moth Diaries (85 minutes, via IFC Films) opens this Friday, April 20 in New York City at the IFC Center. It has also been playing for the past month on VOD and will continue there, if you prefer an at-home movie experience.