Cindy Kleine's ANDRÉ GREGORY: BEFORE AND AFTER DINNER opens at Film Forum

Cindy Kleine is no Louis Malle. And ANDRÉ GREGORY: BEFORE AND AFTER DINNER is no My Dinner With André, though the reference to that earlier work is not accidental. Ms Kliene is, however, the wife of André Gregory, and as such is in a position to know her subject pretty damn well. She is also the filmmaker who gave us a couple of years back that rather incredible documentary, Phyllis and Harold, about her parents, a couple who, it turns out, she did not know as well as she once thought.

It is difficult to imagine another documentary being as surprising and eye/mind/spirit-opening as Phyllis and Harold -- which you should seek out, if you have not yet seen it. Her André Gregory movie is nowhere as involving or shocking, perhaps because Mr. Gregory is still alive. (Her father was already gone by the time the earlier movie was being made and her mother was not in the best of health or mental state by then, either.) Presumably, Ms Kliene (shown above) wants to keep Mr. Gregory healthy and happy as long as possible, and so I suppose we cannot expect to get too up-close-and-personal with the man. (We do see him briefly full-frontal, if that's consolation.)

TrustMovies has generally found Gregory (on-screen, acting, or in interviews) to be a very smart, literate and funny fellow, and so spending time with him now, in his late 70s, is still a lot of fun, not to mention the chance we have, thanks to some archival footage, to see him in his early years and some of his early work that was captured on film. Much of Gregory's reputation (that's he, above, in the old days) rests on his innovative theatrical work as a director, and we do see a little of that, as well as hearing from some of the actors who worked with him (Gerry Bamman, for one).

And of course we revisit briefly My Dinner With André and Vanya on 42nd Street, the landmark Malle films that were and remain such a treat, and on which Gregory collaborated with his longtime friend and maybe muse Wallace Shawn. (They're most likely mutual muses.) We also see rehearsals taking place for a new Shawn/Gregory collaboration on Ibsen's The Master Builder, which Jonathan Demme is currently filming and which we'll get to see maybe later this year.

After a start, during which Kleine explains/shows how the two met and became friends and lovers, we get somewhat into the life and mind of Mr. Gregory. Upfront in all this would be his feelings about and for his very strange parents, European Jews who neglected to let their offspring know that they were all Jewish. (Somewhat understandable, given its time frame during the Holocaust.) Still, these particular parents were unusual, and Gregory's coming to learn more about the "work" his father was perhaps engaged in during Hitler's rise to power and madness makes for surprising, unsettling stuff.

The sections showing us Gregory's theatrical "technique" became, for me, a little tiresome after awhile. Rehearsals tend to drag for audiences, performances not so much (though part of the Gregory technique appears to be that one is always performing, so this at least keeps the energy level high). The movie finally, perhaps reflecting its subject, is rather disorganized and all over the place. But Gregory's personality helps keep us interested. He can be a grand raconteur, as proven by his tale of his experience "acting" in the would-be blockbuster Demolition Man, along side Wesley Snipes and Sylvester Stallone. For his explanation alone of the small misunderstanding with the twatty little director of the film (barely heard from again, I might add), the movie is worth its price of admission.

In addition to his talent, Gregory (with the help of Ms Kleine) comes off as quite a likable man. Late in the movie he tells that everything we may most fear as our lives proceed does indeed comes to pass: that first day at school, sex, college, employment, cancer. It's all life imitating art. Or vice versa. Yet, for a fellow who managed to get all the way to college without ever having been "touched" (never once hugged by his parents or relatives, let alone romantically kissed or touched by a girl or another boy), he's grown up and done all right. And Ms Kleine lets us see this.

André Gregory: Before and After Dinner -- a Cinema Guild release running 108 minutes -- opens this Wednesday, April 3, for a two-week run at New York City's Film Forum. The exclusive Los Angeles engagement begins Friday, May 3rd at the Laemmle Music Hall 3 in Beverly Hills. To see other currently scheduled playdates, click here.

KEEP THE LIGHTS ON: Decade-long tale of love and addiction is Ira Sachs' best work

Don't, as one reviewer quoted on the poster for this movie recommends, "forget Brokeback Mountain" in order to remember KEEP THE LIGHTS ON -- the new and really pretty thrilling love/addiction/commitment-and-the-lack-of-it story from one of our more interesting filmmakers, Ira Sachs. Mr Sachs, shown below, has been making movies for nearly 20 years. While four of his output of eight are best known, each seeming initially quite different from the others, they are connected by being love stories in which the characters have great difficulty owning up to that love.

In The Delta (1996), a young gay man can't own up to who and what he is, let alone connect with another who might make a very good partner. Forty Shades of Blue (2005) gives Rip Torn one of his better later roles, as it tells the tale of young Russian woman living in Memphis with Torn's aging rocker, and what happens when the man's estranged son comes to visit. Married Life (2007), Sach's most commercial (not to mention enjoyable) movie, boats a starry quartet of a cast as it tells, via a surprisingly light and sophisticated touch, of love's promise and pain.

Each of Sach's films has proven better that the one that preceded it -- smarter, more skillful, polished and professional in getting across his points while reaching a broader audience. Now comes this writer/director's newest, which takes us full circle back to his first success. Keep the Lights On, like The Delta, is a gay love story, and it is told, once again, in an indirect, subdued and subtle style.

Yet what a huge difference there is between the two films, and how much more successful is Lights than Delta in keeping us hooked and attentive by making the events shown so much more specific in their details, and consequently the two characters much less amorphous and infinitely more "present" and real.

Sachs' film spans nearly a decade of time as the relationship between Erik (Thure Lindhardt, above, of Flame and Citron and Brotherhood) and Paul (Zachary Booth, below, whom we've only seen in smallish film roles up to now) slowly blooms, fades, blooms again, as the two men feint and parry, all the while held hostage by one's addiction to drugs and the other's to casual sex.  The movie is evidently based on the real-life relationship the director had with his lover -- which the latter wrote about in his own tell-all autobiography published some time back.  This film, I suppose you could say, is Sachs' version of the events. TrustMovies knew nothing about any of this when he sat down to watch the movie, and it absolutely does not matter, I think, whether you already "know" this story or not -- because Keep the Lights On works perfectly well on its own terms.

Sachs has, over the years, honed his narrative skills and coupled these to his early gift for naturalism, which has only grown stronger from movie to movie. Like, The Delta, Lights is suggestive, but in a much stronger manner without ever being ham-fisted. The filmmaker gives both men their due. You care for them as individuals, and you care for their relationship, even if you have grave doubts about it -- and them.

If the film has a weakness, it would be found in the subsidiary characters, none of whom are presented with enough specificity or meaning to rate the time they are given. We have to see some of these people, of course, otherwise it would seem our two guys are living in a vacuum (which at times they almost appear to be doing). And since these characters are played by very good actors -- Julianne Nicholson, Paprika Steen and Souleymane Sy Savane, I don't think their lack of clarity or force is the performers' fault. In any case, it's that relationship we want to get back to, and when we're away from it, the movie seems to meander.

It would be lovely to talk about this film without even mentioning that the relationship is a gay one. But of course the fact that it is rules out reaching around 80 percent of the male American audience (maybe only 70 percent, worldwide).  In terms of "relationship" movies, this film is every bit as good as last year's Weekend, and because this particular relationship lasts much longer than that of  that Friday/Saturday/Sunday movie, it also may seem deeper and more profound. Do see it.

Keep the Lights On, from Music Box Films and running 101 minutes, opens this Friday, September 7 -- in New York City at the Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center, the Clearview Chelsea and the Angelika Film Center; and in the Los Angeles area at the Sundance Sunset 5 and Laemmle's Playhouse 7. To see all currently scheduled playdates, with cities and theaters, click here and then click on the word THEATERS below the main photo.

THE STRANGE CASE OF ANGELICA: Manoel de Oliveira's mystifying opus opens at IFC

To call this film "slight" is to hugely overstate the case. With enough content to perhaps fill an animated short subject (which the movie may remind you of -- but without the required animation and with a seemingly endless running-time of 97 minutes) -- THE STRANGE CASE OF ANGELICA (O Estranho Caso de Angélica), is yet another odd bauble from the 102-year-old Portuguese filmmaker Manoel de Oliveria. As was his most recent movie (Eccentricities of a Blond-Haired Girl), the new one is also about the nitwit, obsessive love of a man for a woman he does not know. The earlier film's ill-chosen love object turned out to be a shoplifter. We've graduated: This one's a corpse.

Loony as this may sound, Oliveira (pictured at left) makes it even stranger (well, it is titled The Strange Case...). His main character is hired in the middle of the night to take photos of the newly deceased, and as he shoots, he falls. And so, it would seem, does the corpse for him. She opens her eyes during the shoot, gives him a wink and a smile, and then begins appearing to our shut-terbug at odd times, taking him for sky-rides in the air, a la Christopher Reeve and Margot Kidder, but with the sexes and control reversed. It's all story-book and asexual: kids at play.

Obsession being what it is, however, our hero must investigate further, and so he visits the family of his new love (they, shown below, are not amused), then to the graveyard and elsewhere. Growing nuttier over time, he is eventually driven to grab the gates of the cemetery and scream, "Angelica!" at the top of his lungs. Unfortunately, the actor assigned to this role, Ricardo Trêpa (shown above, center, often used by Oliveira and also the lead in his "Eccentricities") is not the sort of performer who commands the screen.  In the recent Spanish Cinema Now film Julia's Eyes, much is made of a character so ordinary looking that he seem to literally blend into the wallpaper. No one in the film can remember what he looks like or anything distinguishing about him. Mr. Trêpa would have made an perfect choice for this role. Here, even screaming at those cemetery gates, he fails to register. But perhaps this is the filmmaker's point: the one-sidedness of obsessive love.

There may be other points here, as well: the pettiness and conven-tionality of the bourgeois mentality, the worth of manual labor, the transitory nature of love and life and their connection to death. Oddly, however, though this film lasts more than a half-hour longer than the earlier Eccentricities, its pleasures are noticeably fewer. Not nearly as beautiful to view as its predecessor (except for that shot of our "heroine" -- the lovely Pilar López de Ayala -- below), it seems as small and cramped as the boarding house in which our hero lives -- despite those trips aloft with the floating corpse.

During the film, a statue in the town's center keeps pointing the way, but no one, most of all the filmmaker, manages to find it.  Still, this is such as "personal" and quirky little movie that I suppose -- whatever it thinks it is about and for -- the filmmaker himself was probably more than satisfied with its outcome.

The Strange Case of Angelica, distributed by Cinema Guild, opens in New York at the IFC Center this Wednesday, December 29. Click here for further playdates around the country, scheduled, at this point in time, for February and March 2011.