SFIndiefest 2010: A+D

Amber Sealey's verite-style relationship drama A+D is exactly the sort of rough diamond you hope to see at a festival of independent films and it makes all the dreary shoegazing 'quirky' slacker fare you might have to trudge through to find it worth the effort. This film is fresh, intimate, real, brilliantly written and conceived - but it would have fallen on its face for all that had not the casting of Anton Saunders as Dan and Sealey herself as Alice been so inspired. These two are just fascinating to watch. And - at last! - we have dialogue worthy of real human beings, intelligent but unflashy, nuanced, playful, natural, sliding into darker registers of sarcasm and frustration as matters begin to head south. Alice is an artist who documents their relationship's every bend on her hand-held camera, so the verite edge established right away is extended and then magnified again with short webcam sequences. But the actors are so astonishing that when they drop the camera (and the verite motif it signifies) we are already under their spell - the sense is that we are indeed watching actual footage of Sealey's relationship with Saunders, so hypnotically real is every aspect of this scenario, including the grandstanding and cruelty which finally curdle the mix, scenes which grow organically from conditions we recognize as sheer bewildered inexperience inside a bit of a cultural impasse (Dan is British, Alice American: he questions her stagey confusion and need for 'space', she suffers from his sarcasm and unromantic corners; it doesn't help matters that they are squeezed 24/7 into a small London flat).

So who is Amber Sealey? I can't dig up too much about her online, except that she is based in LA and studied at Central and RADA in London. This is her directorial debut; she also wrote and produced the film as well as starred in it. For a film that never puts a foot wrong in any category that is quite an achievement. Even the ending, with its left-pointing arrow on the road and its shot of Alice in the rearview mirror is an understated touch of mastery.

Anton Saunders is something of a revelation as well. His Dan is by turns sweet, blunt, sexy, sarcastic, provocative, funny, and obstinate, a perfect foil for the moody but fascinating Alice - the two crackle and weave about one another in what is I think the most flawless dual performance I have seen in ages. Maybe ever. See this film. Here's the trailer:

SFIndiefest 2010: The Blood of Rebirth

Filmmaker Toshiaki Toyoda is known for his hip, contemporary themes, youthful urban dramas, music videos and documentaries, so his latest feature The Blood of Rebirth opening in next month's San Francisco Indiefest comes as a bit of a surprise. Based on the Japanese folktale Oguri Hangan and set in a medieval-looking time when gods and demons ruled the earth, the film depicts the trials of Oguri as he is betrayed by a diseased and megalomaniac lord, murdered, and then given the opportunity in the afterlife to return, not as a human but as a 'hungry ghost', whereupon he is rescued by the virgin concubine Terute; he is weak, virtually catatonic, and so unable to defend her against her pursuer, the same lord now greatly inflamed with anger; he struggles on towards a secret spring in which he is magically renewed, and is finally able to confront his (and Terute's) murderer once more. As a story it is about as unsophisticated as they come, which is both its blessing and its curse. The characters are unconsidered, more like signs or types than real people; the maniacal lord is absurd, as are all his functionaries, the hungry ghost (a Tibetan buddhist term of some specificity) is simply sleepy, and the virgin girl a pure cipher; the themes themselves are formulas belonging to the world of graphic novels and comics; there is some exaggeration in speech and gesture, very little in the way of depth or development and a curious lack of meaning to the story itself. But the long, haunting, visually stunning sequences of Oguri and Terute inching their way through rivers and forests, gorgeously captured on 35mm and accompanied by intense, rhythmic, bottom-heavy rock music (courtesy of Toyoda's band Twin Tail) more than make up for these failings. Toyoda has created a poem-within-a-film, a sort of stretched haiku paean to the magic of nature, and inserted it into the center of the action in such an extended way that the story becomes secondary, relegated to the function of vehicle for a very differently complected, meditative work. The lushly beautiful summer forest, its air filled with the delicate snow of Japanese anemone seeds, the stark, rocky streambeds and the driftwood-strewn beaches with their thick coils of ground fog are utterly bewitching; they conjure a mythic dreamtime which is the very element in which such stories move. This filmmaker is a lyric poet before he is a storyteller, a champion of intuitions. There is such a strange quality of innocence in these enchanted passages that we feel we are contemplating a spiritual truth. If you like swordplay, and blood, and magic, you'll enjoy the film regardless of these features, but viewers in search of cinematic artistry and a touch of something quite unique will appreciate this curious dimension of enlightened consciousness within what is otherwise a fairly standard hero's journey.