The glorious reconstruction of Lincoln Center is nearly finished, and the new Alice Tully Hall and its surroundings look sensational. The staff, however, whom I looked so forward to seeing every year, has been cut drastically, and that saddens me every time I head into a press screening. But as to the films this year -- you can't beat a new Pedro Almódovar or a new Todd Solondz for excitement, or the centerpiece of the festival, Precious: Based On The Novel "Push" By Sapphire -- you're in for a thrill. The fall season officially begins with this smart selection. So far I can report on these:
WILD GRASS
Beloved French master Alain Resnais's (Last Year In Marienbad) latest is an aggravatingly whimsical tale of the tumultuous emotions stirred up over a found wallet. Marguerite (Sabine Azema), a dentist and sometimes aviatrix, is out shopping for new shoes when her purse is stolen. A strange and older married man Georges (Andre Dussollier) finds the wallet in a car park and slowly becomes obsessed over the owner. Resnais has not lost his avant-garde playfulness -- no one acts remotely rational, and as their actions became more and more confounding, the movie really began to work my last nerve. I truly hated every blade of this wild grass.
ANTICHRIST
Lars Von Trier's newest is an art horror-film about a grieving couple dealing with the death of their young child. Willem Dafoe plays the husband/therapist who takes his inconsolable wife (Charlotte Gainsboug) deep to a cabin in the woods to face her fears -- but he gets a bloody lot more than he plans for. Gorgeously filmed in "chapters," there is something definitely disquieting about the weirdness of this psychotherapy retreat. And while at times it can be preposterously earnest in its execution, there are moments of true eerie visual poetry. Think Ingmar Bergman's Hour of the Wolf, but with genital mutilation. Dafoe and Gainsborg are extraordinarily good and quite brave too. The ultimate first date film.
BROKEN EMBRACES
Pedro Almódovar's newest is a rapturously convoluted tale of love, obsession, secrets, lies and movies. Mateo (Lluis Homar), a former celebrated filmmaker, now a blind screenwriter calling himself Harry Caine, decides to tell his devoted assistant Judit's (Bianca Portillo) son Diego (Tamar Novas) the ill-fated story of his love for Lena (Penelope Cruz), the mistress of wealthy Ernesto Martel (Jose Luis Gomez). The affair began 14 years ago when Mateo cast Lena as his star in Girls With Suitcases (whose plot lines hilariously echo Woman On The Verge Of A Nervous Breakdown). The jealous Ernesto sends his creepy son (Ruben Ochandiana) to document the filmmaking process with his video camera and then hires a lip-reader to catch the hidden nuances of Lena's affair with the director. Elements of film noir intrude on this melodrama and the movie resonates with film references, from Roberto Rossellini's Voyage To Italy to Michael Powell's Peeping Tom. Penelope Cruz is ravishing and Bianca Portillo as the long-suffering Judit is phenomenal. The movie was based on a photograph Almódovar took of a mysterious couple embracing at the volcanic Golfo Beach, and he brings their story to life on the screen with his usual wit, dark humor, sophistication and enough plot twists to dazzle even the blindest of film lovers.
Photo credit: The Film Society of Lincoln Center/IFC Films
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