hot docs: dreamworld / my second life

this was the north american premiere of both dreamworld and my second life. jorien van nes’ dreamworld tells the story of patrick, a 30 year old man living in the netherlands who spends most of his time playing second life, the online virtual world that has been gaining popularity recently. he describes creating an online avatar and the process of creating a second life identity. we meet patrick’s wife, danielle, who also spends a great deal of time in second life. cut between this story, are interviews with two other women living in the u.s. one of these women, christine, is patrick’s online girlfriend and he is planning a trip to meet her in real life. his wife also has an online boyfriend and so allows him to make this trip. once patrick arrives in the u.s., we witness how awkward their interactions are. at the end of the weekend, patrick discusses how the trip was not what he expected, while looking clearly disappointed. the films running time was only 30 minutes and i think had it been longer, van nes could have focused more on the implications second life has on the increasingly indistinguishable boundaries between reality and fantasy. while patrick had clearly functional distinct lives in reality, with his wife danielle, and in fantasy, with christine, when he tried to bring his fantasy life into reality, the two did not easily mesh. i think dreamworld is important because it’s one of our first forays into the effects of our culture entering into more and more virtual and online social networks, and as a result moving away from personal and physical interactions.

douglas gayeton’s my second life is the first documentary to be shot entirely in second life. the premise is that a california man named molotov alva went missing and director, gayeton discovered diaries of this man who chose to leave his real world existence behind and “entirely” live in second life. the documentary within a documentary is told from alva’s perspective in what is a problematic conflating of the real and fantasy worlds. granted these concepts are philosophically very interesting, i found gayeton’s approach to be superficial and pretentious. throughout the film, quotes from philosophers and various intellectuals are used to blatantly further these lofty ideas, while not actually expanding upon them, in what seems an attempt to deceive the audience into thinking gayeton is more insightful than he actually is. afterwards, these suspicions were confirmed at the q&a where gayeton came across as highly arrogant about the “truth” of his documentary.

hot docs: girl inside

this world premiere of maya gallus’ girl inside was presented with hell’s grannies at hot docs and was co-presented with the inside out film festival. the film follows twenty-six year-old madison’s male to female transition. this is a fairly typically structured documentary, mostly involving talking heads style interviews edited together with observational footage. a significant part of the film is madison (formerly matt) speaking directly to the camera in a diary style about her experiences with transition. she begins by explaining the incongruity between her biological sex and gender that she felt even as a young child, but how she did not ‘officially’ start transitioning until her early twenties. once given a summary of madison’s progress up to the present of the film, we are aligned with her as she visits several family members for the first time since transitioning, including both parents and her brother and sister. these visits all go relatively well; while still demonstrating a few complications within her family in regards to the transition. the other primary voice in the film is of vivian, madison’s grandmother. we learn that madison left her rural new brunswick home to live with vivian in toronto when she was seventeen without much reason given for the move. vivian functions as madison’s main support through this transition, offering her advice on how to perform as a woman. i found vivian’s perspectives interesting because while she is entirely accepting of madison’s decision, her notions of gender are rigid. she obviously understands that gender is fluid but recognizes the importance of societal cues and expectations for gender. for example, she instructs madison in several scenes on proper behaviour for a woman; like when madison dives into her swimming pool, vivian tells her that ‘isn’t how a girl would dive’. she also gives Madison tips on hairstyling and makeup which seems to be what madison wants; to pass as a woman and be as unremarkable as possible. we witness madison going through hormone treatments, minor surgery to remove her adam’s apple, and the struggles of saving enough money to have the final gender reassignment surgery over the course of the three years that the film spans. during this time, before she’s had the final surgery, madison decides to pursue dating using the internet. dating pre-transition was an issue that i had personally never considered as part of the process. madison chooses not to state online that she is transitioning, but instead decides that if she meets a man who she could potentially be serious with, that she will tell him in person before it does get serious. we don’t see her dates but learn about them through madison’s brief descriptions to vivian; we learn that some were uneventful and she does end up telling a couple men about her transition and while they are both accepting of it, they choose not to continue seeing her. about half way through the transition process, madison and her best friend cameron begin dating which creates an interesting dynamic. a generous amount of time is paid to this relationship in the film; cameron identifies as a straight male and sees madison entirely as female even after being friends with matt for many years. madison makes clear that if she had any doubt that cameron might be gay, their relationship would not work. cameron and madison date for a couple of years before madison can afford the surgery and when she reaches that point, he travels to montreal with her for the surgery. we see post-surgery that madison is obviously happy and that their relationship is doing better given that they can finally have a sexual relationship as well as an emotional one. at the q&a, madison confirmed that they are still together and happy. i found their relationship one of the most interesting parts of the film as they both obviously needed to be completely secure in their own sexualities for the dynamic to work for them. madison also discusses what she describes as her own internalized homophobia being a struggle when deciding to transition and all the way through the process. as a boy, when she had feelings towards another male, she explained that she would repress them because she had internalized the idea that being gay was wrong. so the idea of self-hatred arises and gets complicated in this situation because as madison explains, she never felt like she was attracted to a man as a man, but as a woman. this situation helps to make obvious how psychologically damaging heteronormativity can be; that there are more people willing to acknowledge their gender dysphoria but that there still must be countless others who refuse to come to terms with it. while the film presented an overall positive conclusion, madison made clear at the q&a that this was only her story of transition, and not the exemplary model of a transsexual story. i think it was important that she spoke about the trans organizations in toronto to explain that more work towards understanding needs to be accomplished and how she has met many other people not as lucky as her.

hot docs: hell's grannies

jason gileno’s hells’s grannies was screened with girl inside as part of the canadian spectrum. hell’s grannies is a short documentary, following a group of elderly women who are lead by sybil rampen, 75 who decided as she got older to do something about the rut that often accompanies aging. they create a book of them posing with motorcycles and appear on tv shows. the documentary also follows their trip to port dover for the friday the 13^th biker gathering where they attempt to sell their book and see where they fit in the biker world. the grannies themselves were cute and the film had a positive message of not letting your age determine your behaviour, but overall i felt like it wasn’t very cohesive and after it was over, i was still unclear on whether the grannies actually rode motorcycles. during the q&a, this question was asked and apparently not all of the grannies ride. i got the impression that the film was edited quickly because some of the footage was from about two weeks earlier and would have benefited from more time and a lengthier running time.

hot docs: o amor natural

o amor natural, a brazilian film from 1996 by heddy honigmann, is a series of conversations with elderly brazilian people about the famous poet, carlos drummond de andrade. honigmann asks all those interviewed if they are familiar with his erotic poetry. this collection of poems, titled o amor natural, was published posthumously. andrade was concerned that the poems would be perceived as pornographic. honigmann asks these elderly people to read selected poems for the camera. most scenes of this contain a shot of the person reading a poem while the camera zooms in slowly on their faces. some of the people interviewed offer what they know about andrade, the person. most interesting to me was the man who made his hats; he shows us the two colours of hats that andrade preferred. while we never actually see andrade himself, we begin to create an image of him built from these anecdotes and the poems. several of the people interviewed speak about their own sexual history, providing a surprising look on elderly sexuality, a more or less ignored subject in this culture. as if to emphasize or draw attention to their age, honigmann includes footage of almost every participant commenting on needing their glasses to read the poems. the elderly come across as much less repressed than we often think through the relaxed way the interviewees discuss the poems and in turn, their own sexuality. we can see from the image built that andrade was equally as comfortable with his sexuality, yet due to a perceived sexual repression on the part of the public, his erotic poetry could not be published until after his death.

grindhouse

i saw grindhouse, the postmodern homage to the experience of 60s b-movies, about a week ago and am still excited about it. grindhouse consists of two feature length films, planet terror (directed by robert rodriguez) and death proof (directed by quentin tarantino) as well as four trailers for non-existent films. two of these trailers come before the first feature, machete (rodriguez) and don’t (edgar wright), and two come before the second feature, thanksgiving (eli roth), and werewolf women of the s.s. (rob zombie). taken all together, these films and trailers are meant to recreate the experience of visiting a seedy grind house theatre during the 60s were exploitation films heavy on sex and violence were screened. rodriguez’s planet terror does exactly this; the plot revolves around a highly contagious virus spreading through a town and creating zombie-like creatures, complete with disgusting bubbling goiters, and rose mcgowan with a machinegun leg. rodriguez captures the feeling of these films including using effects to make the film appear damaged and announcements and apologies for missing reels. while i found planet terror to be a lot of fun and probably a genuine facsimile of exploitation films, i felt that tarantino’s death proof was a far more interesting reinvention of the genre. death proof begins with a group of three girls going out to a bar in texas one night and meeting stuntman mike (kurt russell) who claims to have a car that is ‘death proof’, meaning you cannot be killed while in it, regardless of the damage inflicted. stuntman mike also meets pam (rose mcgowan again) and offers to give her a ride which is when we see him finally turn out to be the creep we can tell he is. after pam’s death, stuntman mikes goes after another group of four girls all working on a film set, and it feels as though an entirely new film is starting. the four girls have the day off and three of them end up taking an old and expensive car for a ‘test drive’ that involves their daredevil australian friend to ride on the hood while holding onto belts attached to the doors. stuntman mike finds them and tries to run them off the road; thus starting the longest and most intense roughly fifteen minute car chase that i was almost certain would end in a disgusting bloody mess, given all of grindhouse that I had seen up until this point. what does end up happening is a complete surprise within the context of the film but not so surprising when you realize tarantino is directing. the final scenes take the typical treatment of women within this genre, i.e. exploitative, and turn them on their head. the women are no longer frightened, nor do they allow themselves to be objectified or taken advantage of. they save themselves from stuntman mike and essentially end up kicking his ass. it only took about five minutes of death proof to realize that it was a quentin tarantino film, right down to the atmosphere and the dialogue-heavy script. i realize a lot of people criticize tarantino for his pretentiousness but i think it’s at least partly earned; he has enough knowledge and understanding of these genres to enable him to not just pay homage to them but to construct and completely re-imagine an exploitation film for an audience in 2007. i’ve been hearing lately that due to grindhouse’s poor performance at the box office, planet terror and death proof may be separated and sold as two different films, albeit in longer cuts of each. and while granted, i’d enjoy seeing longer versions of each, i think it would be counterproductive to the effect that rodriguez and tarantino were hoping to establish; that of a grind house double-bill, something that many of us have never had the opportunity to experience. i think this speaks to the complications in trying to recreate this genre inside a box-office driven multiplex, instead of the grind houses that would have screened them in the past. i think it’s clear that rodriguez and tarantino love and respect these exploitation films and wanted to bring the experience to a younger audience but it just doesn’t quite work within the current structure of north american cinemas.

watch the trailer

the namesake

the namesake was directed by mira nair (vanity fair, monsoon wedding). it is an adaptation from the novel by jhumpa lahiri, and follows the story of gogol, a young man born in america to indian immigrants. the film is essentially about leaving one’s homeland and assimilating in a new country with entirely different cultural codes and beliefs, all the while attempting to instill a sense of heritage into children born outside of this culture. i found that the film was effective at establishing how frightening and lonely it would be to leave home through the character of ashima, gogol’s mother. we are aligned with her as she enters into an arranged marriage with ashoke and he brings her to america where he is working on his phd. i was completely drawn into the first half of the film as it followed the story of gogol’s parents immigrating to america and establishing their life there. however, there is a noticeable shift when the alignment of the film switches to gogol (kal penn) and his difficulties being an indian american, desperate to discard his heritage and be just an american. we start with gogol at his highschool graduation where he is getting high with friends and then must go home to visit with family friends. we see him traveling between his two worlds and the familiarity with both, but we also see how he clearly resents his parents for expecting him to celebrate his indian heritage. this shift of identification in the film causes it to feel like a completely different genre. when we were with ashima, i felt like i was watching a carefully paced and executed indian film, and when we our brought forward to gogol’s teen years, i suddenly felt like i was watching a teen movie meant for kal penn’s harold and kumar fans. i found his character very annoying during this period of the film because we see him rejecting his parents over and over as they patiently try to explain to him about his culture. i think part of this frustration comes from the fact that we’ve been aligned with the parents up until this point and all of a sudden we are thrown an obnoxious teenager who wants nothing to do with them, but also from the fact that I don’t think kal penn is a great actor. i never really believed him as a teenager, nor was he convincing as he got older. i don’t think kal penn should be blamed entirely for this odd change in the mood of the film; it also felt like maybe the filmmakers needed to edit it quickly and tried to rush a lot of the second half of the film. there are several important plot points that get fast forwarded through and almost glazed over; whereas everything in the first half was given great attention. an example of this contrast would be when we first see ashima and ashoke, there is a scene where ashima is about to meet her soon-to-be husband and she is trying on his shoes in the hallway. there is so much time spent on watching her put these shoes on and model them as she considers what america will be like. conversely, in the second half we are shown gogol’s relationship with maxine (jacinda barrett), ashima’s death, the breakup of gogol and maxine, his subsequent relationship with moushumi (zuleikha robinson), her infidelity, their breakup, and the conclusion of the film. because of this rushed conclusion, i was taken out of the film and found it really hard to believe many of the characters’ actions.

watch the trailer

300

i saw 300 awhile back but luckily i don’t have much to say about it. 300 was directed by zack snyder and is the newest frank miller graphic novel adaptation. the film is based on the true battle of thermopylae and the 300 spartan soldiers who fought in it. this film has a similar aesthetic style to that of sin city, 2005’s frank miller adaptation. having read neither of the graphic novels upon which these films were based, i can’t really speak to the quality of the adaptations, but in terms of purely comparing the films, i enjoyed sin city more. while the visuals of 300 are impressive, i found myself a little bored part way through the film. the beginning of the film that builds towards the battle was interesting, but once at war, the film was somewhat tedious. the style of the battle scenes were all the same (regular speed, fast motion, slow motion, etc) which looked amazing but didn’t impress me as much once i’d already seen the techniques. the dialogue of the film is primarily meant to inspire the spartan soldiers, and us in turn, the audience. for the most part though, the script is cheesy, flat, and decidedly uninspiring; the same could have been true of sin city given that both have a graphic novel as source material but in my opinion, sin city was a much denser text. i think its safe to say that 300 is attempting to wow us with its visuals and violence and that the focus should not be so much on the narrative or the acting. but in retrospect i don’t find myself remembering the aesthetic as particularly exceptional, and therefore i feel like 300’s visuals failed to compensate for its lack of a strong story.

another aspect to the film i found interesting was the way it negotiates between being homophobic and homoerotic. as a film targeted primarily towards heterosexual males, there are surprisingly few females in it; only one in fact comes to mind, queen gorgo. not only are there very few women present, but the incredibly muscular, half-naked spartan soldiers who all live and fight together have clearly formed strong bonds amongst each other that leave open the possibilities for queer interpretations. these homoerotic overtones seem to be balanced by the homophobic treatment of the persian leader, xerxes (rodrigo santoro). xerxes, the spartans’ enemy is highly feminine and could potentially be sexually threatening, and thus the film demonizes him by implicating the villain as queer. the homoerotic nature of the spartan soldiers relations are a threat to masculinity within this testosterone-heavy film and therefore xerxes is villianized to ease these anxieties and reinforce the heterosexuality of the soldiers. granted, all this comes with the comic book territory and fanboy culture but i still hoped for less adherence to this gendered structure.

watch the trailer