Sundance Film Festival

The first couple of days I spent at Sundance, all the L.A.-types wanted to talk about was the death of producer Don Simpson. Just a day before the festival had begun, the man behind Top Gun, Flashdance, and numerous other '80s blockbusters, was found dead in his bathroom. Although Simpson could hardly be considered a Sundance figure, talk would shift from the few titles which generated buzz early in the festival - like Dan Ireland's period romance Whole Wide World and Nicole Holofcener's engaging relationship comedy Walking and Talking - to wistful remembrances of wildly decadent Simpson soirees of years past. Clearly the increase this year of romantic comedies and other PG-13 type material wasn't doing it for everybody.

Indeed, cognitive dissonance was the name of the game at Sundance this year. While some have been urging the festival to scale down its scope - issue fewer passes and take the festival back to the more intimate gathering place it was ten years ago - the world of independent film is simply too woolly a place right now for that to happen. With more and more films competing for slots and hungry acquisition execs needing the blessing of Sundance to go for "execution-dependent" small titles, it seems unlikely that the festival will return to the relaxed vibe of earlier years. Still, the general consensus was that if Sundance is going to continue on the kingmaker path, it should at least acquire better screening facilities. A number of this year's screenings were hobbled by broken projectors, bad sound, and, in one case, no chairs in the auditorium

Susan Streitfeld's Female Perversions, with its riveting central performance by Tilda Swinton and strong supporting work by Karen Sillas, was hardly the disaster many claimed. The story of a neurotic female San Francisco D.A., adapted from a psychoanalytic study of female perversity, the film, at times genuinely nutty but always fun to watch, at least had the courage of its convictions. The filmmaking seemed plugged into the same obsessions as Swinton's character. When Paulina Porzikova, playing a rival attorney, came under Swinton's withering glare, her close-ups seemed to go soft. The Warshawski brother's Bound could have used some of Female Perversions' eccentric bravado. Although it boasted lesbian sex activist Susie Bright as a "technical consultant," its intriguing attempt to blend lesbianism with neo-noir conventions got bogged down in formula plot turns. Another unsuccessful "artsploitation" pic was Francis von Sterneck's God's Lonely Man - an inexplicable remake of Taxi Driver (with a scene from Paul Schrader's Hardcore thrown in). Although the film went so far as to cast a would-be De Niro lookalike (who actually resembled Peter Coyote), it failed to make clear the point of revisiting Scorsese's psychic terrain in such a slavish manner.

Much better were Holofcener's film, a deftly directed audience-pleaser which found unexpected emotional resonance in a series of small-scale encounters; prize-winner Welcome to the Dollhouse; I Shot Andy Warhol; American Job; and many of the docs, including When We Were Kings and Troublesome Creek. Still, the increase in selections this year meant, for the first time, that a huge number of films seemed to fall entirely by the wayside. It didn't seem to matter whether a film was in Competition or not, but at the start of the fest a number of titles attracted the buzz while others attracted little debate, pro or con. Sundance this year added a new American Spectrum as a sort of grab-bag of additional titles. Several films, including John Walsh's genial romantic comedy Ed's Next Move, sold out of the Spectrum despite grumbling by producers that the two screenings accorded Spectrum films - as opposed to four for Competition titles - made selling the films that much more difficult. - Scott Macaulay

As good as festival hits Welcome to the Dollhouse and the equally high-profile I Shot Andy Warhol and Walking and Talking were, six weeks post-Sundance finds me still thinking about another handful that flew below the critical radar. I was captivated by Richard Lewis' raw turn as a man in freefall in Peter Cohn's Drunks, a double-edged study on the seductive nature of twelve-step alliances. Alexander Payne never struck a wrong note in Precious (also called Meet Ruth Stoops), a black comedy about abortion activists with a similarly ironic sensibility as Dollhouse and Laura Dern in her best performance yet. Also at home in this vein was Lisa Krueger's assured debut about kids set adrift and forging ahead on their own, Manny and Lo, in which a wise child guides her needier teenage sister towards truth and trust. Then there was Bandwagon, John Schultz' sharply observed rock-and-roll comedy about a North Carolina garage act on the way up, pure souffle but absolutely delightful. Big Night's focus on brothers partnered in a failing restaurant rivalled Eat Drink Man Woman for the most mouth-watering meal-preparation scenes in recent memory. - Mary Glucksman

In addition to the American Spectrum, the festival also inaugurated the Frontier section which was devoted to more experimental feature films, and while some people lamented the sense of marginalization, it was a pleasure to find more cutting edge work at the festival. James Bennings' Deseret traces a history of Utah via articles culled from old issues of the New York Times. These are read over images of Utah, each of which runs for a set time. The result is a steady layering of politics, conflict and history over a seemingly empty and stark space. Nina Menkes' The Bloody Child is a simultaneously brooding and visceral meditation on the murder of a woman by her Marin husband. Menkes continues her hallmark critique of patriarchal violence, as well as her collaboration with her sister, Tinka Menkes, who plays a Marine in charge of the arrest of the suspect. Based on a true incident, the film offers a sense of the psychic reverberations of the bloody murder. Also in the section was Michael Benson's Predictions of Fire, a riveting documentary about art, politics and ideology in Eastern Europe. Selected for the Panorama in Berlin, the film will open at New York's Film Forum through Artistic License in October. - Holly Willis

Rotterdam International Film Festival & Berlin International Film Festival by Noah Cowan
Sundance Film Festival by The Editors
International Film Festival of Mannheim-Heidelberg by Diane Sippl
Hawaii International Film Festival by David James