Friday 12 October
At 75, Shohei Imamura offers one of his most ribald films–possibly his daffiest–to date: a well-told fantasy about a young woman in a fishing village on the Noto peninsula (The Eel’s Misa Shimizu) with a strange physical condition that essentially turns her into a sexual geyser when she’s aroused. She gets involved with a middle-aged businessman (The Eel’s Koji Yakusho, also a familiar lead in Kiyoshi Kurosawa films) who loses his job and wife, then turns up in the village looking for a golden Buddha stolen from a Kyoto temple that’s said to be in the young woman’s house. Things get much more complicated after that, but interest never flags over 119 minutes. This isn’t a major effort, but it’s an enjoyable one. (JR) (Landmark, 6:30)
Halle Berry Tribute
This modestly colorful Belgian-French-Dutch film by Lieven Debrauwer builds on the strength of good performances and a delicate interplay of types and stereotypes. The story of the unfolding relationship of four sisters is so enjoyable that it seems a disservice to mention that this falls into the feel-good movie subgenre about retarded characters whose childlike goodness has the power to transform others. Paulette is a flamboyant, pretty-in-pink shopkeeper, amateur opera singer, and proudly self-made woman who struggles with the unwanted adoration of her sweetly dim and endlessly pesky sister Pauline. When their sister Martha, Pauline’s stern caregiver, dies, her will bequeaths substantial assets to whichever surviving sister is willing to assume the burden of Pauline for life. Paulette and the youngest sister, Cecile–a career woman in a new relationship–bounce the unfortunate Pauline back and forth, but Pauline has already made her choice and doesn’t care who knows it. Pauline and Paulette might easily have been mawkish; instead it has a light comic edge and a dignity built on the fine characterization of Pauline. 78 min. (BS) (Music Box, 7:30)
All About You
About 500 miles west of Brisbane lies the last town on the Queensland railway system–tiny jerkwater Cunnamulla, the subject of Dennis O’Rourke’s unflinching documentary. The indolent townspeople would be amusing if they weren’t so pathetically impoverished; almost everyone is dependent on a government pension for survival. One of the few exceptions is Arthur, who laconically cruises the scorched streets in his cab, always without a fare. His garrulous wife seems to know the entire town’s business, which, given the paltry number of inhabitants, isn’t that difficult. O’Rourke, a veteran documentarian, has a singular talent for unobtrusively capturing people as they go about their everyday lives, which allows him to accumulate some arresting and disturbing scenes: two young teenage girls talking intimately about their assorted sexual partners, an old, toothless aborigine woman singing an impassioned spiritual, the town dogcatcher dragging a yelping dog to a field and shooting it. The film does have some small, quiet moments of hope and humor, but overriding everything is the sense of boredom and futility that has settled on the town like so much dust. The residents are all aware that their lives stink, but no one seems to have a clue how to change anything. 105 min. (JK) (Landmark, 9:30)
