It’s Hard to Be Nice (Tesko je biti fin)
2008 (Bosnia and Herzegovina)
Director: Srdjan Vuletic
Never mind the glibness of its title: Srdjan Vuletic’s It’s Hard to Be Nice is a raw fable about the curious outline that morality assumes in a wounded society. For a few weeks, we follow the darkly comic struggles of Sarajevo cab driver Fudo, portrayed with boundless appeal by Sasa Petrovic. With the fortitude of a friendly, beaten hound, Fudo attempts to claw his way out of a criminal past and into a prosperous, upstanding future for his wife and infant son. Unabashedly allegorical yet characterized by a dirty-fingernail pathos, It’s Hard to Be Nice rarely overreaches in its bitter commentary on the contemporary cultural struggles of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Partial credit goes to Patrovic, who delivers a performance of miserable humor and righteous flickers, the latter tinged with the pitch-perfect awkwardness of a newly repentant man. That said, it’s Vuletic who adeptly maintains the film’s balance of naturalism and tragic fancy, excepting some bouts of manipulative silliness at the conclusion. Conveying the tribulations of reform and forgiveness with a knowing appreciation for its complexities, Vuletic captures the conflicting demands of law, peace, greed, and duty that overwhelm societies emerging from war’s shadow.
Sinner Come Home
2007 (USA)
Director: Blake Eckard
Blake Eckard’s tale of eroding relationships and morality–and not-quite-redemption–in the ossified small-town landscape of northwestern Missouri never quite achieves the searing strength that the director hopes for. Perhaps that’s because Sinner Come Home is most potent in its quiet moments, as Eckard’s characters, particularly his protagonist Eddie (Ryan Harper Gray), suss out the pivotal conflicts in their lives in elliptical, beer-soaked mumblings. Eckard evokes Jeff Nichols’ Shotgun Stories or even Killer of Sheep in his keen awareness of the everyday indignities suffered by Americans who dwell outside the ramparts of suburban ease. Sinner Come Home, however, is no neo-realist snapshot, no matter how natural its rhythms. No, what Eckard delivers is gaping melodrama, complete with unfortunate dips into wincing dialog and a tragedy that comes out of left field. The stiff, self-conscious acting of many of the performers breaks the film’s authentic spell and betrays the creakiness of a film-maker still developing his talents. Still, for all its telltale seams, Sinner Come Home offers a bold examination of the perils of rural life, absent populist mythologizing or condescension. Insightfully and without judgment, Eckard perceives the poison in the sheer boredom and dissatisfaction of a small-town existence.
Wendy and Lucy
2008 (USA)
Director: Kelly Reichardt
Unquestionably the best film I have had the pleasure to catch at the Festival so far, Wendy and Lucy is a work of riveting drama and touching humanity. Michelle Williams, all anxiousness and trembling desperation in a ragged black pixie cut, stars as Wendy, a young woman drifting her way to Alaska in search of work. Her companion is a frisky mutt, Lucy, to whom Wendy exhibits a profound and obsessive devotion that will be familiar to any pet owner. Eschewing a soundtrack or a dribble of unnecessary exposition, Wendy and Lucy portrays a few days of the companions’ tribulations in small-town Oregon, where a cascade of bad luck threatens their future together. Williams, who is essentially on screen for the entire running time, mesmerizes in a portrayal simmering with weariness, terror, and directionless anger. Employing a breathtaking, chafed naturalism, director Kelly Reichardt expertly conveys the despair of life on the American margins, where vagrancy is criminalized and loose change is tallied like the remaining days of a prison sentence. Earning every spasm of heartache with her genuine depiction of life’s casual cruelties, Reichardt captures a wrenching picture of the sacrifices we all make for those we love.
Special
2006 (USA)
Directors: Hal Haberman and Jeremy Passmore
For awhile, Hal Haberman and Jeremy Passmore’s Special succeeds as a blackly comedic take on the superhero film. In early scenes, the directors balance admittedly hilarious visual gags and absurdity with an array of straightforward themes–the wearying banality of urban life, our longing for pharmacological solutions to our miseries, and, yes, the sadly juvenile nature of comic fandom. In Michael Rapaport, Haberm and Passmore seem to have found their ideal man-child. Rapaport portrays Les, a parking enforcement officer who enters a drug trial that will allegedly boost his self-confidence. Deluded that he has acquired a plethora of superpowers–flight, telepathy, teleportation, speed, and invulnerability–Les appoints himself the city’s crime fighter. (Mostly this consists of tackling shoplifters and purse-snatchers.) The film’s initial treatment of Les–the unfortunate and softly sympathetic progeny of society’s multitude sicknesses–is fascinating, but Haberman Passmore don’t seem to know what to do him. Things go off the rails once the directors introduce a medical and financial conspiracy, and then start engaging in bizarre indulgences that smell of a misdirected pretension. Despite some engaging developments in a thin romantic subplot, by its final twenty minutes Special is stuck in a narrative and thematic mire from which it never escapes.