Ibsen's The Wild Duck gets a modern-day update via Simon Stone's THE DAUGHTER

The Wild Duck is among Henrik Ibsen's trickier plays. I've never seen a fully realized, thoroughly believable production of it, either on stage or at the movies. As I recall, the German/Austrian film from 1976, starring Bruno Ganz and Jean Seberg (her final screen performance) comes as close as any. Now we have a modern-day version of the story, adapted and directed by Australian theater director Simon Stone (shown below), which is credited as "inspired by" the Ibsen play and said to be based upon Stone's earlier theater adaptation, which I have not seen.

I have seen THE DAUGHTER -- Stone's filmed version of his adaptation -- and it is a terrible disappointment. It takes everything that is most melodramatic about The Wild Duck and runs with it. To disaster. (Ibsen always included plenty of melodramatic elements in his work, but his smart, thorough, explorative dialog was able to rise above sheer melodrama.)

Further, the filmmaker has seen fit to telescope the play pretty drastically, which highlights the melodrama even further. And he has loaded some of his characters with additional baggage, particularly that titular "daughter" (who is older here and has a problemed boyfriend in tow), perhaps to make what happens seem more understandable/palatable. This, too, simply stacks the melodramatic deck more heavily.

The tale told is of two families joined by seeming friendship and employment but who share a much heavier-duty bond. Which, of course, will be revealed in due course. Rich guy (Geoffrey Rush, above) heads one crew, poor guy (Sam Neill) the other.

When rich guy's estranged son (Paul Schneider, above) pays a visit, ostensibly to celebrate his dad's upcoming wedding, that son gloms on to a family secret (and gloms far too easily, even for melodrama), after which a bubble of trouble blooms and bursts.

Now, Rush, Neill and Schneider are fine actors. So, too, are the women in the film -- Odessa Young (below) as that daughter, Miranda Otto (above) as her mom, and Anna Torv as Rush's about-to-be bride -- but all they have to work with here is a screenplay full of "feelings," since Stone has seen fit to remove, change or streamline Ibsen's most telling dialog into fast-food fodder.

The film's best performance comes from Ewen Leslie, shown below, left, as Otto's husband and that daughter's would-be father. Mr. Leslie gets the most to do, say and (of course) feel, and he is quite good -- until the finale, at which point this sodden melodrama eats him alive, too.

The-big-family-secret genre is such a tricky thing to carry off that it is probably best left to soap opera and the like, in which we expect the worst but also expect it to be a lot of fun. All that occurs (and is made so very much of) in The Daughter begins to register as far too close to camp. This sort of thing shouldn't happen to Ibsen, nor even to, well, a duck.

From Australia and running a thankfully short 96 minutes, the movie opens this Friday, January 27, in New York City at the Cinema Village and the following Friday, February 3, in Los Angeles at Laemmle's Royal.

Watch Jeff Feuerzeig's AUTHOR: THE JT LEROY STORY -- and you may feel the need to bathe

Boy, that "truth" thing! Ain't it a bitch? Here comes yet another new documentary in which, for all I know, literally everything we're dished out here is the "truth." However, since everything about the original situation is also a lie, which, as lies are wont to do, begins spinning off more and more lies in order to keep the original in place, what we're soon engaging with is something so grandly nefarious that one might call it "the whopper of 'em all." Still, what the hell: If Jayson Blair can get his very own movie, why not JT Leroy?

Jeff Feuerzeig, who wrote and directed AUTHOR: THE JT LEROY STORY, begins his film with a quote from Federico Fellini about creativity and truth -- A created thing is never invented and it is never true: It is always and ever itself -- that is clearly designed (by Feuerzeig, not by the late Signore Fellini) as an excuse for all that follows. Though it does not in the least manage the necessary excusing, it does prove but the first of many things about this fascinating-but-sleazy documentary that waves a red flag.

In truth, I would not know how to go about making an honest documentary about a situation like this, and perhaps Mr. Feuerzeig, realizing that he faced the same dilemma, chose what looks, more and more as the movie unfolds, like the easiest route. He simply hands the documentary over to its "protagonist," a woman named Laura Albert (above) who devised the whole JT Leroy scam and then brought it to pulsating, media-savvy life -- in the process, turning it into one of the most infamous, crazy, we've-conned-you-good! literary hoaxes in the history of, well, literature.

The above description sounds tasty enough to suck you in, no? Then why does this documentary begin to reek so foully, so quickly? TrustMovies thinks it's because Ms Albert never once in the entire proceedings shoulders any real responsibility for wrong-doing. She tells her tale as though it were just the most enjoyable, amusing and necessary thing to do. Now, if you feel, as Albert clearly does, that making up a story but labeling it as a true memoir, then creating the character who supposedly wrote the thing -- different age and different sex from the actual author -- in order to gain some of that wonderful stuff called fame is simply A-OK, then you'll probably embrace the documentary as all-fun-and-games.

Along the way, Albert, together with her Leroy creation (a gay, abused, teenage, would-be transgendered street urchin/hustler just longing for a world into which s/he can fit) cons everyone from supposed literature connoisseurs to celebrities in just about every field from music to movies to books to you-name-it. And, of course, the media just goes wild over a story (drugs. sex, prostitution, abuse) and a storyteller (under-age sex, queer and tearful) like this. In terms of lies and pretense, only the Donald could Trump it -- and, as we know, the media sure has given him plenty of undue attention.

What Albert really craved was success and celebrity above all, and from what we see here, she still does. And so the doc certainly shows us clearly and precisely how our culture of celebrity spawns more of the same, while feeding off itself in the process.

From filmmaker Gus van Sant -- who would of course gravitate toward someone of Leroy's ilk and is conned to a fare-thee-well (that's he above, right, with Albert and actor Michael Pitt) -- to television writer David Milch to actress turned director Asia Argento (below, right), the gullible just keep falling fast and hard. Ms Argento evens stars in and directs a so-so movie based on the LeRoy's "masterwork," The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things.

No one involved with Albert is safe, with doctors and analysts coming off as especially easy marks. Now, evidently, most of these folk are angry at Albert for putting them through the wringer once again via the new documentary. Well, honeys: You deserve each other. Whether or not the audience deserves to sit through this film is another question. Several times during and again at the end, I found myself muttering, Who gives a shit? I sure didn't, but then I also didn't follow Leroy's career during its ascendancy nor much during the scandal that followed.

If you followed that trajectory, the movie might just be your cup of whatever. Certainly it is full of details as to how the big lie was foisted upon us, and those details are often pretty amazing. And amusing. Overall though, it would seem as if Ms Albert is simply praying for this doc to hit pay dirt and provide her with a second round of celebrity and fame.
Good luck, dear.

From Magnolia Pictures and running a rather lengthy, considering its "true" content, one hour and fifty minutes, the movie -- after hitting the bigger cities and more noted cultural centers over the past couple of weeks -- opens here in South Florida tomorrow in Miami area at the O Cinema, Wynwood. You can click here to see all currently scheduled playdates, cities and theaters.

Oh, granny! Tom Fassaert's Dutch doc about his problemed relatives, A FAMILY AFFAIR

So much is made these days about the often "tenuous" link between truth and whatever new documentary is currently under the critical microscope -- see Nuts, Cameraperson and Kate Plays Christine for three prime examples: two excellent, the other not so -- that when an old-fashioned, point-your-camera-and-try-to-get-the-whole-story appears, it almost seems fresh and unique. Such is the case with A FAMILY AFFAIR, in which Dutch filmmaker Tom Fassaert attempts to get his paternal grandmother, Marianne, who now lives in South Africa and has reached the ripe old age of 95, to come clean about the past.

Mr. Fassaert, shown at right, dispenses with anything "meta" or even much that is discursive. And don't look for clever animation to help fill the time and increase your enjoyment. The filmmaker explains at the opening what he is after and why, and then he simply goes for it. But since what he is going for is the deep secret that appears to be hiding within that grandmother, you can expect to enter a certain very dark region known as "family." When Mr. Fassaert's father was just a young boy, his mother, Marianne, placed him and his brother in a children's home, occasionally visiting them but in reality more-or-less abandoning her two children.

Both grew up highly problemed. Tom's father (shown above with his mother in later years) worked around those problems as best he could, providing a home and a help to his son, Tom. Tom's uncle, dad's brother René, was not so lucky and remains, to this day somewhat mentally at sea. Down the years, the relationship between Tom's dad and Tom's grandmother has remained rocky -- very off and on, stop and start.

So when Tom receives a request from his grandmother to come and visit her in South Africa, he jumps at the chance, turning on his camera almost immediately. Family albums -- in both Holland and South Africa -- are unearthed and combed through (granny was a fashion model back in the day) and the camera stays on grandmother as much as possible with occasional forays into dad and René and a few even farther outliers.

It does not take long, however, before Tom (and we viewers) realize that his granny (below, in her glamor curlers) is not going to be forthcoming on her own. She won't be forced to reveal the past, and so she'll have to somehow be cajoled. "The truth is subjective," she tells us early on. "You'll never find what you're looking for, even if you try." A near-complete narcissist who lives only to look good, granny is a piece of work you won't easily forget.

The more we learn about her and the history of Tom's family, the more awful the woman appears to be. There's a will (and the changing of inheritors), and an autobiography to be written (with a change in the ghost writer along the way). Grandma would rather flirt with her grandson than give up those secrets easily, and so the film, too, takes its sweet time. Yet it is never boring because we keep learning new bits and pieces, while seeing grandmother and her two sons more fully.

Finally, you might even find yourself with a kind feeling or two for granny (though these hardly outweigh the damage this thoughtless, selfish woman has done). The press release for the film promises a big "reveal," which turns out to be, in our current times, something relatively minor.

By the film's end, though, we've been shocked and moved and made to once again understand how difficult it is to get to the bottom of things. And yet Mr. Fassaert has managed to do his job in a way that seems about as honest and truthful as possible. He probes, gently and then more forcefully, but backs off when he must. Personal and painful, the movie goes about as far as it can.

The secret at the center of it all -- how could you do this to your children, and why? -- is never fully answered. The mystery of "family" remains just that. But once again, as with all good documentaries on this subject, the door has been opened a crack wider and we've seen something special and different, enticing and disturbing, that we can now add to that memory book of oddball families we have known.  Some of us might also realize that our own family could easily be included, too, even as we feel gratitude that ours is not nearly as oddball as what we've seen here. (That's Tom, above, in his somewhat younger days.)

A Family Affair -- supposedly released via Abramorama (but good luck trying to find the film on its web site), spoken in Dutch and English with English subtitles -- opens tomorrow, Friday. September 16, in Los Angeles (at Laemmle's Music Hall) and New York City (at the Cinema Village). Elsewhere? Don't know, but one hopes to see this doc make its DVD and/or digital debut soon.

Grief explored with a beauty that resonates in Piero Messina's studied L'ATTESA (The Wait)

Grief, along with one's reactions to it, is hardly a new subject for the cinema, but I'll wager you won't have seen a film about grief any more beautiful than L'ATTESA, which translates as The Wait (the Italian word is so much lovelier, no?), the new film from first-time/full-length writer-director, Piero Messina. In fact, this film opens (and continues along for some time) with one drop-dead gorgeous image after another, each beautifully composed and shot, that spread out before our eyes in, well, a kind of wonderment.

Signore Messina, shown at right, begins with a canny mix of religious iconography and sexual imagery (yes, it's Jesus-on-the-cross doing his thing, once again). Is this a funeral? Yes, and eventually we see the coffin, followed soon by the mirrors being covered in a simply stunning Sicilian villa. Readers who appreciate artful and superb cinematography have probably already stopped reading this review and are headed out to the nearest theater to catch L'Attesa, and I certainly can't blame them. The year is not quite half over, but this movie will certainly be remembered as one of its most beautiful.

It also stars an actress who has become a big draw, if not an outright hallmark of quality for American arthouse audiences: Juliette Binoche (above), here seen at in one of her quieter and more inward modes. She plays the mother of the young man who occupies that aforementioned coffin. Or does he? This is -- and sort of is not -- completely clear, for awhile, at least. Is the son indeed dead? When his girlfriend (played by Lou de Laâge, shown below, and who was so impressive in last year's Breathe), shows up for a visit, mom can't quite bring herself to spill the beans to the girl, and thereby hangs the tale of this quietly fraught, maybe-not-quite-believable, but still pretty interesting (and omigod gorgeous) movie.

Messina is not a huge fan of sparkling dialog (the Italian Noel Coward, he ain't). Words are used sparingly, especially at the film's beginning but also often throughout. Were not the filmmaker so adept visually, he might not hold us as well as he does. Once the girlfriend arrives and mom (very) slowly warms to her, and she to mom, the movie also warms up.

So to what, exactly, does "the wait" refer? For the body (if it is indeed missing) to show up? For the right time to spill the beans? For mom to come to grips with her loss? Or is this "wait" actually an opportunity for bonding? Betrayal of sorts is found in the past, and soon in the present. (As we see, refusing to tell the truth is a kind of betrayal all its own.)  A pair of young men -- one gay, one straight -- suddenly appears, and they are invited to dinner at the villa, which allows for even more minor dialog but further commanding visuals.

The son's cell phone is used in a major way, providing access to various characters' thoughts and motives, as a strong feminist bond begin to grow between the two women. But, as the third major character insists -- mom's handyman and jack-of-all-trades (Il Divo's Giorgio Colangeli, shown above) -- the girlfriend should be told the truth.

How this all pans out manages to be both semi-surprising and semi-expected, and if my good opinion of L'Attesa rests mainly on its visuals, this is because the film finally lacks much emotional resonance -- despite very good performances from its cast.

Plotwise, at this point in his movie-making career, Signore Messina seems a little too manipulative for his film's own good, and perhaps even too studied in his exquisite use of composition and cinematography (the camerawork here is by Francesco Di Giacomo). But I would call L'Attesa is a very good start to the further filmmaking that surely lies ahead.

From Oscilloscope and running 100 minutes, the movie opened end-of-April in New York and L.A., followed by a rollout across the country in limited release. Here in South Florida, it opens this Friday, May 20, for a one-week run at the Bill Cosford Cinema in Miami. To view all currently scheduled playdates, with cities and theaters listed, click here and scroll down aways....

Matt Sobel's TAKE ME TO THE RIVER: family drama full of innuendo, shock and withholding

Having not a little in common with last week's much better movie, The Automatic Hate, this week's opener, TAKE ME TO THE RIVER, is also a family drama about the past and secrets and how all this inevitably catches up with us. It features some fine performances, along with direction that pushes these to the fore, while paying attention to the place-specific (Nebraska) visuals and to a screenplay (also by Mr. Sobel) that dispenses with almost everything except the insistently heavy-handed and secret-laden plot.

The filmmaker, pictured at left, begins and ends his films with his "first family" in the car, arriving then departing from a family reunion that has turned into a kind of disaster. (Can you think of a family reunion in movies that has not? TrustMovies is certain that there must have been one or two, but he can't remember them just now.) The film's similar beginning/ending duplicates those of another, also much better movie, from a few years ago, The Way Way Back. What goes on in between, however, is quite different.

So eager is Mr. Sobel to get right into things that he practically dispenses with any of the reunion, other than an immediate family photograph and some odd "bonding" between Ryder, the teenage son from California (played by Logan Miller, above, right), and one of his cousins, a wise/bizarre-beyond-her-years little girl named Molly (played quite wisely and bizarrely by Ursula Parker, below).

Something very strange happens, which immediately divides the reunion into us vs them (Molly's dad, played with unusual anger and creepiness by Josh Hamilton -- below, right -- is the primary "them"), and this leads the film's several main characters, into even stranger things.

The filmmaker, I think, can be given credit for not wanting to answer all the questions his plot raises. But when the characters themselves do not bother to ask the most important questions here -- one in particular: What happened to Molly? demands an answer -- believability soon goes out the window.

Much is made, going into the movie, about Ryder's homosexuality and whether or not this should be kept from the Nebraska relatives. His mom (Robin Weigert, above, left) and dad (Richard Schiff, above, right. who also, coincidentally, played one of the protagonist's dads in The Automatic Hate) suggest exactly that, but by the end of this strange movie, that homosexuality seems to have been used mainly to demonstrate this family's predilection for deviant sexuality of all kinds. Golly, it just must be in our DNA!

Of course it is. But so is our need for explanations, answers to questions, and in fact, the need to ask those question. Instead Take Me to the River is content to offer up innuendo, a little sexual shock and perhaps incipient lobotomization in place of characters who act alive and alert. (Unless perhaps, Mr. Sobel is saying something about America's "red" states and what they spawn).

Well, the movie's certainly edgy and thought-provoking. I just wish it were a little more real. From Film Movement and running 85 minutes, it has played a number of film festivals across the country over the past six months and now opens this Friday, March 18, in New York City at Landmark's Sunshine Cinema and the following Friday, March 25, at Landmark's NuArt in Los Angeles. You can see all currently scheduled playdates, cities and theaters by clicking here and then scrolling down.

Oliver Schmitz's LIFE, ABOVE ALL: a mix of South African reality and sentimentality

Strong, memorable, central performances ground the festival favorite from South Africa, LIFE, ABOVE ALL, which has already played Cannes' Un Certain Regard, 2010; Toronto, 2010; and this year's San Francisco, Roger Ebert and the Human Rights Watch film fests. Ostensibly taking place in present-day South Africa, the movie will remind many of us, in terms of the attitudes of the citizens on view, of the early 1980s in America's big cities, as AIDS, as yet unnamed, was harvesting lives and scaring the wits out of communities, gay and straight.

If homosexuality was for decades "the love that dare not speak its name," AIDS was (in many ways still is) the disease that had better shut up -- never more so, if Life, Above All has it right -- than in South Africa. Interestingly enough, homosexuality is nowhere to be seen in this movie, while AIDS is all over the place, taking its toll even as the citizens refuse to recognize it -- denying, lying and pretending, but ostracizing anyone suspected of suffering from the plague.

Written by Dennis Foon, from a novel by Allan Stratton, and directed with a combination of skill and schmaltz by Oliver Schmitz (shown at right, who has directed mostly for television -- and one of the fine episodes from Paris je  t'aime), the movie is never less than involving as it tells the story of the young girl Chandra, played by first-time actress, Khomotso Manyaka, shown above, who gives a commanding performance. At the film's beginning, Chandra's younger sister is dying, and her mom, we soon discover, is also sick. The townspeople are suspicious about the causes.

The most venerated woman in the village (Harriet Lenabe, above), also clearly the wealthiest (she's got a phone!), is a friend to Chandra and advises the girl as to what to say and how to phrase the reasons for the death and sickness. Chandra would be happy to simply tell the truth, but this is not allowed, and the movie soon becomes a push-and-pull tale of Chandra on one side and her relatives, the villagers and ever her own mother -- shamed into silence and secrecy -- on the other.

Whether by design of the filmmakers or the reality of the situation in Black South Africa today, the movie is very pro-woman. Whether they be right or wrong, it's the women who are strong, while the men -- with the exception of the village schoolteacher, above -- are low-life expendables or seem pussy-whipped hubbies unable to think for themselves.

And yet, because almost all of the women shown here, with the exception of Chandra and her friend Esther (a sad, angry and very impressive first performance by Keaobaka Makanyane, below, left) are on the wrong side, including the woman witch doctor sent to "explain" the situation (above, right), one might have some trouble calling the movie "feminist."

As Life, Above All, moves toward the point of showdown, coincidences pile up and, I'm afraid, the movie takes the easier path to a feel-good, lessons-leaned-thank-you, finale. Oh, it's moving enough, all right, but it isn't particularly believable, given all we've seen prior to it. Worth viewing for the performances, the beauty of the faces and the landscapes, the film leaves us with the sense that we've just witnessed a big-screen, art-house, foreign-language version of an after-school special.

Life Above All, from Sony Pictures Classics, opens Friday, July 15, in New York City at the Lincoln Plaza Cinema and Film Forum, and at the Royal in West Los Angeles. Further playdates all around the country can be found by clicking here.

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On a related note, if you have not yet seen the excellent and quite provocative documentary, House of Numbers by Brent Leung  (my earlier review is here), which deals with AIDS in South Africa and how the incidence of poverty impacts on its diagnosis, you might want to give this worthwhile film a look.