The Portland International Film Festival (PIFF), Part One
Website: festivals.nwfilm.org/piff34
A city the size of Portland is fortunate to have a facility like the Northwest Film Center, and very lucky to have the PIFF, now in its 34th year. We very often get to see movies before they open in New York or Los Angeles.
There are even more films, and venues, than usual this year, and because I sometimes attempt to have a life outside my reviewing duties, I don’t get to see every film in the festival. So, I have cherry-picked a few, and will update this list whenever I can.
Oh, and I guarantee that two of these movies will be the weirdest you see all year.
Here’s what I have seen so far.
The Man Next Door (Argentina)
One of those annoying friend/associate/neighbor movies that pits a seemingly-normal person against a crude and destructive jerk.
In this case, an architect and his family live next door to a working-class thug. Very Apollonian vs. Dionysian.
The neighbor is making renovations to a historically significant house, which he does not own or have the right to do. The architect tries various means to dissuade the neighbor, all to no avail, and the situation escalates. Naturally, both sides display increasingly bad behavior, but we expect better from the educated man, don’t we?
And that is one of the issues this film takes on. It is a dark satire on manners and morals and the thin veneer of civilization. Nothing we haven’t seen before, but done well and reminds us that we are mostly the same no matter what culture we live in.
The Robber (Austria)
Based on a true story about a world-class marathon runner who is also a bank robber. The film opens with him in jail, but he has been given special treatment (a treadmill in his cell, e.g.) because of his athletic abilities.
When he gets out, he reconnects with a young woman he knew, and immediately begins to rob banks again. His talent as a runner is a plus. He can’t help himself, it seems.
Kinetic, and surprisingly emotional, we almost root for the robber. He and the woman become lovers, and this softens his brutal and dishonest behavior.
A fast-paced movie with a simple but compelling story.
Rubber (USA)
A movie-movie, but with a surreal twist. A select group of people is out in the California desert watching a “movie,” but it is taking place live as they watch it. We are told that things happen for no reason in movies, and that is what happens here.
It is a fantasy/horror/black comedy wherein the monster is a discarded rubber tire. The tire somehow, for no reason, comes alive, animates itself and discovers it has the ability to destroy animals, people and machines. And it does that thing.
In the meanwhile, the “producers” of the “movie” plot murder among the viewers. The whole thing comes together in the strangest and funniest ways, if this kind of dark humor is your idea of funny. And, the ending is one of those 1950s sci-fi ominous cliff-hangers.
Gory and hysterical (in every sense of the word), Rubber is a nightmare in a nightmare landscape. I have no idea if there is a political subtext to this, but I really don’t care. It was a hoot.
Mutant Girls Squad (Japan)
Anyone who has seen Japanese game shows knows that they are very different from our own. Loud, overstimulated and demented, just like this movie.
This movie is X-Men conceived and produced with that same unhinged attitude. Mutants have been subjugated and hunted down by humans, but many still exist, and their powers become manifest at their 16th birthdays. The girl who is the center of this film is half-mutant, but she is still hunted down by the government, and her mutant father decapitated at her birthday party.
She goes on the lam to be discovered by a shadowy group of mutant terrorists ( a relative term here, because the government is worse).
The movie is full to overflowing with cheap-and-grisly special effects, notably the severed body part and the fountain of obviously fake blood. The mutants, who make the X-Men look like characters in a Jane Austen novel, have “treasures” like a chainsaw literally emerging from a young girl’s anus. Really. Even Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez look like hopeless weenies against material like this.
In other words, this movie is a crass and vulgar display of some of the worst aspects of modern Japanese culture, not excluding soft-core pornography and pedophilia. You know, girls in school uniforms and lots of underwear shots. It is also outrageously funny and bizarre. This movie is not for everyone, and it made me cringe as much as it made me laugh. Maybe more. But, if you know what to expect, and the excesses of Japanese bad taste won’t offend you, go see it.
There will be better uses of your time.