by Jon Reinsch

Women On Top

Film Fest Round-Up

ombing through the wreckage of a mind laid waste by this year's Seattle International Film Festival, one's memories vary in intensity. A few films have been forgotten already, while others are still playing out in the mind. One thing that might make the difference is a film's characters. In the small and decidedly nonrandom sample of films I saw at SIFF, the male and female characters were not equally memorable. Sure, there were some intriguing male characters, like those in Late August, Early September, Nigel Hawthorne in At Sachem Farm, or Nick Nolte in Breakfast of Champions. But for whatever reason, the female characters left the deepest impressions.

One of the least developed of these characters appeared in the most popular film at SIFF: Run Lola Run, a movie in the style of a video game. Pay your money and get three plays--three chances for our magenta-haired heroine to save her dimwitted boyfriend from hoodlums. She faces obstacles at every turn, but in tight spots has a secret weapon (her shriek shatters glass). It's a little embarrassing to admit how much fun something so nearly devoid of depth can be. Like video games, something about the repetition of the sounds and images makes it addictive.

Nothing is a much harsher experience. It's about a woman trapped--by her own attachment--in an emotionally abusive marriage, with no secret weapon. This drama was inspired by a court case in Poland. And like the documentary The Thin Blue Line, it may have had a role in getting someone released from prison. It's the latest from Dorota Kedzierzawska, who has an amazingly intimate style that uses extreme closeups and few words. When a baby cries, it's the only thing happening in the whole world. Without being heavy-handed, it brings home the horror of this woman's situation. (Kedzierzawska's TheCrows is newly available on video.)

The Terrorist is another film about a woman trapped by circumstances, facing a life-or-death decision. In this Indian film, 19-year-old Malli is recruited as a suicide bomber. It's exciting for a film to take an interest for once in a character like this--a pawn in a power struggle. As a result of certain experiences, she begins to question her mission. Her story is used to meditate on questions like: what is the best way to fight against evil, through vengeance or tenderness? As she straps on a belt of explosives, the audience feels the full range of her dilemma. The film undermines but does not deny the validity of a vaguely defined political cause, and the strange pull of life is made palpable. Both Nothing and The Terrorist have moments of great visual beauty.

A film more concerned with prime movers on the world political stage is Jinnah, a biography of the founder of the state of Pakistan. But at least a few women share the stage: the film devotes an impressive amount of screen time to Lady Mountbatten and to Jinnah's sister Fatima. This is consistent with the film's depiction of Mohammed Ali Jinnah himself as a Muslim who championed the rights of women.

One of the happiest films in the Festival was Autumn Tale (scheduled to open July 23 locally). It was directed by Eric Rohmer, who has a gift for making people in conversation absorbing. Actresses Marie Riviere and Alexia Portal are supremely confident and frankly manipulative in the good cause of finding a man for their mutual friend Béatrice Romand. Rohmer's people are delightful in the way their self-possession alternates with vulnerability.

But there's a dark side to manipulation, and it's well represented by Julianne Moore's deliciously evil schemer in An Ideal Husband. As she showed in Safe, Moore is capable of great things. Since then her choice of roles hasn't always matched her talents as well as it does here.

Speaking of darkness, John Sayles' Limbo is populated with characters haunted in various ways by the past. Not even the young escape this. Vanessa Martinez plays a self-destructive teenager with a brilliantly morbid imagination. Her mother, a lounge singer, is played by Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio. When she says she keeps on singing because of those moments of grace when she's totally into the song and knows she's conveying it, we believe her.

Another adolescent in a troubled family is featured in Emporte-Moi (Set Me Free). I suspect there are autobiographical elements in this film by Léa Pool. One day at the movies, 13-year-old Hanna is entranced by the image of Anna Karina in Jean-Luc Godard's Vivre Sa Vie. And who can blame her? As in Limbo, this girl's problems center on a mother who's not really there for her. That this flawed family is nevertheless capable of closeness is quite moving. Still, as this girl grasps at models of womanhood, Karina's insouciant prostitute is seductive. But as Hanna learns, real life is often messier than what we see--or think we see--on the screen. Where can she turn? Well, if you can't be Karina, you can always emulate Godard, at least to the extent of getting behind the camera.

That was Barbara Sonneborn's strategy as well. Her husband Jeff was killed in 1968 in what is known in Vietnam as the American War. Struggling to understand her loss, she was driven to make Regret to Inform. This documentary tells the story of war widows both American and Vietnamese.There are Vietnamese who still feel anger, andsome of the American women speak of their efforts to come to terms with the immorality of the cause their husbands died for. Sonneborn herself says: "What haunts me is not that Jeff died here, but that he had to be a part of this at all."