Good, raucous fun (for awhile) -- Preston & Overbey's femme-fest, THAT'S WHAT SHE SAID

The new movie, THAT'S WHAT SHE SAID, directed by crack actress Carrie Preston and written (her first) by another actress, Kellie Overbey, gets off to a great start with some increasingly funny, ribald dialog from the mouths of a couple of excellent performers, Anne Heche and Marcia Debonis, soon to be joined by a third, the very funny and here quite piquant, Alia Shawkat. As the opening credits roll, we see a montage of NYC women, coupled to the dialog between Heche and Debonis. The talk is crass, very funny and very sexual. And the visuals are all women, all the time. The men, when they appear, are seen from the rear, in slight or partial profile, or if frontal, then very piecemeal.

This directorial touch makes its point lightly and rather charmingly, without hammering it home: We're in for a chick flick of sorts, so hang on. We do, but the results overall prove a little less than we expected, considering the film's first half hour, which is both written and directed with smarts and style, as it sets up the current situation, while giving us some history of the two women. Heche (rough, gruff and ready) is helping Debonis (a good-hearted, plus-sized sweetie) prepare for an important date. Ms Preston (shown at right) directs with energy and pizzazz and the first big scene, set inside a coffee/latte haven, is terrific -- cleverly paced and wittily, foul-mouthedly written by Ms Overbey (shown below).

When Heche's back is momentarily turned, Debonis, in her standard "helper" mode, picks up a sad and sobbing young woman (Shawkat) with man trouble. Shawkat's real affliction, however, is something else entirely, which leads to some over-the-top, funny (but not quite funny enough) further business. What cast and crew here seem to be going for is a modern-day, all-women, screwball comedy, with a higher sex quotient than we're used to seeing/hearing. For a time this work pretty well, but once the complications and coincidences start piling up, the humor doesn't quite reach the same level, and the seams start to show.

Too bad, because the actresses -- both leads and supporting players -- are talented and very game (that's Heche, below left; Debonis, below right; and Shawkat above), but the screenplay seems to run down even as it proceeds. The finale, however, with five femmes in a bar, sitting around a table talking, manages to be sweet and, yes, a little moving, considering all that's come before.

That's What She Said, a Phase 4 film release running just 84 minutes, is available to stream now on Netflix and Amazon Instant Video, and to rent or purchase on DVD.

Annemarie Jacir's SALT OF THIS SEA: ownership & occupation in Israel/Palestine

You couldn't ask for a more timely or explosive subject for a film than that chosen by writer/director Annemarie Jacir, whose first full-length film is SALT OF THIS SEA -- which is also said to the the first film from Palestine by a female director. (This "Salt" is certainly more flavorful and timely than another that opened a couple of weeks back, and the initials of the person most responsible for the success of each film -- coincidence? -- are AJ.)  Using a documentary style to carry her narrative, Ms Jacir, shown below, tracks the "adventures" of a Brooklyn-born young woman, Soraya (played by a great beauty named Suheir Hammad, shown at right, two photos below), of Palestinian lineage who comes to this native-land-of-her-soul in order to visit her late grandparents' home in Jaffa and access her grandfather's bank account.

Things do not move ahead so easily.  From her protracted airport visit and interview/search by authorities (can anyone, especially Soraya, be surprised by this?) to her experience with the bank, she and her quest are blindsided left and right.  Along the way she meets a young local, Emad, played by Saleh Bakri (below, left, of The Band's Visit, and another beauty: This pair alone makes watching the movie very easy on the eyes). Emad works as a restaurant waiter while waiting for his visa to be granted to study in Canada, where he has a scholarship pending. The glimpses we get of Palestine life, while not horrendous, are certainly not pleasant. Employment (and the money to pay employees) seems unusually "iffy," and that visa, it turns out, has been rejected a number of times already (golly: do Israelis not want their Palestinian brethren to succeed in life?).

So Soraya, Emad and his best friend Marwan (a clownish but enjoyable Riyad Ideis, shown at right, two photos below) hatch a plan, and here the movie either hops the track entirely, depending on your tolerance for genre-jumping, or at the very least becomes pretty problematic.  I won't reveal all that transpires (mini-spoilers ahead) but will say that the photo below reveals a part of that plan -- which then takes our threesome deep into Israeli territory, where the men wear yarmulkes and Soraya's citizenship and use of English is a major help in getting by.

All this is not very believable, I must say, yet it enables Ms Jacir to explore the themes that really matter to her (and should to the rest of us): ownership, occupation and the right to travel freely between points and countries. If the filmmaker does not do this nearly fully enough (her scenario is simply too creaky), she at least forces us to face up to some troubling contradictions in so-called western (and one eastern) "democracies."

When the threesome finally arrives at the home of the late grand-
parents, it is greeted by perhaps the most welcoming Israeli in memory -- who tells the group to stay as long as it wants. Yet so obsessed is Soraya by what was taken from her family back in the 1940s that she cannot negotiate even a minor peace. This turn of events is actually all too believable; it brings the woman's character and psychological problems to the fore, where they now remain through the film's conclusion. It's not so easy to put the past behind you when that past has been taken from you due to nothing for which you or your ancestors were personally responsible. But this also brings up the principle used in situations from wartime conquering to long-term squatting: possession equals ownership.

You can't go home again as it turns out.  We knew that, but we may not have seen it expressed from quite this interesting/exotic a view.  Soraya and Emad become briefly like some new Adam and Eve, but nothing here  can last for these Palestinians.  The film is propaganda, of course. Yet despite the clumsy manner in which some of the story is handled, the performances are strong and the ideas and feelings generated even more so.

From one angle you can view the film as the story of a disturbed woman looking for her roots while wreaking havoc on those around her. On the other hand, you could just as easily get away with giving this movie a title oft-used but still pertinent: a Stolen Life.
Or maybe as a kind of suicide road-trip, minus the bombs.

Salt of This Sea, via Lorber Films, together with the nicely ironic and alliteration-heavy distributor Philistine Films, opens tomorrow, Friday, August 13, in New York City at the Quad Cinema, followed by engagements in other select (read "highly-limited-distribution") cities.  Eventually, one hopes, we'll also be able to see it on DVD.