I’m writing this at the end of a jam-packed day at the Bahamas that began with a guided jeep tour of the highlights of Grand Bahama Island, including stops at Lucayan National Park, Gold Rock Beach, the Garden of the Groves and the Grand Lucayan Waterway. I’ll have plenty more about these destinations and more in my travel piece on the Bahamas in the February issue of Boca Raton.
But without further ado, I also caught three films on Saturday – the first of which, “About Fifty,” is a real gem from promising writers/stars Martin Grey and Drew Pillsbury, who were on hand to present the film in its Bahamas screening. They play best friends Adam and Jon, respectively, the first of whom is struggling to cope with a trial separation from his wife, the latter a potentially life-threatening medical ailment. They hit the road in full-speed-ahead mid-life crisis mode, which means playing casual golf in Palm Springs, attempting to score with younger women and generally working to postpone the inevitability of aging.
Hitting an elegiac pitch between comedy and drama, Grey and Pillsbury are convincing onscreen partners (they’ve been friends in “real life” for decades), as skilled in front of a camera as they are a screenwriting program. Walking embodiments of the almost universal desire to turn back the clock, the actors bring a poignant grace, ragged authenticity and weary acceptance to their archetypal characters; they rarely if ever descend into contrived scenarios or treacly dialogue. The film’s one misstep is a mean-spirited sequence involving a booty call with overweight women, but the rest of the movie’s ladies are treated with respect. In light of odious mid-life-crisis spectacles like Wild Hogs, About Fifty is a restrained, grounded revelation. Its South Florida screening dates have passed, but the film has received distribution and may arrive in Florida again by the end of the year.
Next, I saw a beautiful 7-minute short titled “Things To Do,” made by Australian director Ana Maria Belo. It relies on a paradigm-shifting plot twist, and to reveal anything about the film’s story would be to give too much away. Instead, I recommend that you just watch it for free here: http://vimeo.com/27993598. Suffice it to say that Belo is an auteur in the making and should have a bright future in feature films. She has a powerful command of the language of cinema as a visual medium; “Things To Do” could have been a silent film with one or two title cards, and it wouldn’t have lost any of its emotional impact.
“Things To Do” also screens, along with three other shorts, at 2 p.m. Nov. 5 at Cinema Paradiso.
Finally, I saw “Silver Case,” the feature-film debut from director Christian
Filippellla, and if the movie shows us anything, it’s that he can out-Tarantino Tarantino, at least in his dialogue. In this bloody postmodern comedy, Filippella’s human thesauri engage in witty banter that sounds scripted but still engaging: Gangsters riff on the nature of corporate consolidation and consumerism and drop words like “circumspection” and “elucidate;” an unctuous guy in a bar chats up two attractive women by ruminating on selfishness and moral relativism. Far too quirky and cerebral for traditional mainstream success, “Silver Case” is one of the most enjoyable movies I saw this year at FLIFF, and it should develop a cult following in the years ahead.
But Filippella borrows more than just ratatat verbal verbosity from Quentin Tarantino; he also builds off of the most alluring unsolved mystery in “Pulp Fiction” – what’s in that glowing briefcase? – and makes it the central focus of his film. This time, it’s the silver case of the title, a sleek Pandora’s box with a tempting “Do Not Open” label slapped between its locks. Few have the ability to open it, but everyone wants to; the jet-setting narrative takes place in Hollywood and Italy and features an international cast including a politician (an unassuming Eric Roberts), a coke-snorting movie producer (Brad Light), a perspicacious criminal (Brian Keith Gamble) and a mob-connected antiques dealer (Seymour Cassel). Their own curiosity about the contents of the case is also ours, and it’s enough to carry this jaunty work through its occasional rough patches. It doesn’t add up to much, but it’s a lot of fun while it lasts.
Silver Case also screens at 7 p.m. Nov. 4 at Muvico Pompano and 9 p.m. Nov. 7 at Cinema Paradiso.
