April 16, 2003

BAY GUARDIAN CRITICS – Robert Avila, Kimberly Chun, Cheryl Eddy, David Fear, Susan Gerhard, Dennis Harvey, Johnny Ray Huston, Laura Irvine, B. Ruby Rich, Chuck Stephens, Camille T. Taiara, and Jennifer Young – untangle the best and the worst of this year's festival. Please see the box for venue and ticket information; next week, look for week-two and -three listings.

Thursday, April 17

The Secret Life of Dentists (Alan Rudolph, USA, 2002) The erratic Alan Rudolph has always enjoyed, with varying success, diving into self-contained milieus – from the Me Decade mecca in Welcome to L.A. to the famous salons of The Moderns and Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle. But he's arguably never investigated a scene as familiar yet surprising as the one here: a suburban middle-class marriage, with children. Dentists who share a practice, David (Campbell Scott) and Dana Hurst (Hope Davis) have reached that point in their lives where activity is incessant but actual stimulation is rare; with three very young daughters, a mortgage, and god knows what other ordinary obligations stretching years ahead, their well-plotted future can be seen as either comforting or suffocating. It's Dana who seems to be suffering from the latter reaction at present. She's depressed when her one outside creative outlet (singing in an amateur opera production) wraps up, unusually testy around the house, seemingly in a midlife crisis. Afraid she's having an affair – or worse yet, might leave him – David channels his frustration and worry into a fantasy alter ego (Denis Leary) who articulates all of the "bad boy" impulses this good husband and father has long since buried. Leary plays Leary like no one else, but what's his standard hipster wise guy doing here? Hedging the filmmakers' bets, apparently. His role constitutes a big, compromising flaw in a movie that otherwise portrays "routine" crises in wedlock and child-rearing with such freshness you might think these were new subjects for cinema. Secret Life's long climax is nothing more than a family of five getting the flu – and it might be the most engrossing, detailed, nail-biting set piece you'll see all year. 7 p.m., Castro. (Dennis Harvey)

Friday, April 18

The Baroness and the Pig (Michael Mackenzie, Canada, 2002) An American "old maid" heiress newly married to an aristocratic French art importer (Colm Feore), the Baroness (Patricia Clarkson of Far from Heaven) soon finds 1880s Parisian high society suffocating – and unwelcoming, particularly once she dares to flaunt its traditions and hierarchies by devising a salon of new technological achievements (electric lights, etc.). Increasingly cold-shouldered both at home and by her snobbish peers, the Baroness turns her restless industry toward cultivating the greatest "novelty" of all, a feral young woman (Caroline Dhavernas) she's found "raised by pigs," utterly without human language or social skills. Michael Mackenzie's Canadian-produced first feature suggests a Peter Greenaway influence in its adventuresome use of digital processes and its air of intellectual gamesmanship. On the other hand, the rotely protofeminist spin on a Henry James-ian story often makes this seem like just another subpar stab at Masterpiece Theatre/Merchant Ivory mimicry. The results are watchable but hardly as witty or provocative as Mackenzie seems to think, especially once Feore reveals himself as the true pig here, subtype male chauvinist. Clarkson is a terrific actress, yet this, her largest screen role so far, is also perhaps her least challenging or interesting. 9:15 p.m., Kabuki. Also Sat/19, 1:45 p.m., Kabuki. (Harvey)

Blissfully Yours (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Thailand, 2002) The standout new director of the past few years shares more than his initials with Andy Warhol; Apichatpong "Joe" Weerasethakul's second feature revives the sketchy screwball humor of Warhol's Morrissey films. Blissfully Yours also fuses the trysts in Eden of Eric Rohmer with the compellingly odd personality portraits of Tsai Ming-liang. References aside, the resulting mysterious object has a quirky beauty that's unique. A trip to the movies becomes a picnic in the jungle, and just when the viewer starts to feel like a restless backseat driver trapped with some interesting kooks – an hour or so in – the credits arrive, set to a Thai version of that hypnotically hummable summer samba "So Nice." As the characters find and lose paradise, the rhythms of the editing become profound, and the sunlight in a darkened theater is better than the real thing. All hail a contemporary classic that provides exactly the kind of art and soul missing from today's U.S. "indie" cinema. 7 p.m., PFA. Also Sun/20, 6:15 p.m., Kabuki. (Johnny Ray Huston)

The Century of Self (Adam Curtis, U.K., 2003) Originally a four-episode series that ran on the BBC several months back, this eye-opening documentary (shown in two two-hour parts) highlights how the 19th-century theories of the repressed unconscious were utilized to pioneer mass psychology and conspicuous consumption throughout the 20th century. The focus falls mainly on the father of modern psychology, Sigmund Freud (shown repeatedly puffing away on those phallic substitutes us laypeople refer to as "cigars"), and his extended clan, notably his daughter Anna Freud and his nephew Edward Bernays, the man who bastardized his uncle's theories to sell everything from potatoes to politicians. Covering a virtual A to Z of the last century's perpetrators and victims of the great societal mindfuck – everyone from FDR, Hitler, Reagan, Wilhelm Reich, and Rupert Murdoch to the Weathermen makes cameos – the film(s) somehow manage to turn an exhaustive look at a distinctly "intellectual" property into an accessible, compulsively watchable four hours. 4 p.m., PFA (parts 1 and 2). Also Sun/20, 5:45 p.m., Kabuki (parts 1 and 2); Tues/22, 4:15 p.m., Kabuki (parts 3 and 4); April 24, 4:15 p.m., Kabuki (parts 1 and 2); April 25, 4 p.m., PFA (parts 3 and 4). (David Fear)

Doing Time (Yoichi Sai, Japan, 2002) Korean-born Japanese actor-director Yoichi Sai's Doing Time must be the least likely prison film ever made. For one thing, it's largely about a group of inmates absolutely in love with the food that's served inside their little big house. And for another, it manages to completely avoid any of the genre's usual visual mannerisms (tomb-dark lighting, cell bars casting hundred-year shadows, block after block of numbing rectangularity), instead concentrating on bright and eccentric framings, prisoners who exhibit oddly ideographic body language, and occasional glimpses of the snow-capped mountains in the distance. As unpredictable as a filmmaker as he is underused as an actor (that was him as Takeshi Kitano's stoic superior officer in Nagisa Oshima's Gohatto, in which he always seemed on the verge of bursting into laughter while acting opposite the stone-faced funnyman), Sai was also Oshima's assistant director on In the Realm of the Senses, and the master's influence sometimes hovers around the edges of his work. 4:30 p.m., Kabuki. Also Mon/21, 6:30 p.m., Kabuki; April 24, 7 p.m., PFA. (Chuck Stephens)

Historias minimas (Carlos Sorín, Argentina, 2002) Ah, Argentina strikes again, as yet another fresh, lovingly tender, cinematically shimmering film by a young Argentine director arrives in the United States deserving our applause. Set in the barren landscapes of Patagonia, where a handful of isolated and desperately poor folks eke out an existence, Historias minimas studies not poverty or dysfunction but rather the simple but powerful machinations of the human soul. With laser-beam intensity and a carefully chosen cast of mostly nonprofessionals, it communicates the intense yearning that can erupt over such tiny details as a birthday cake, a game-show prize, a lost dog. Its loopy pacing is something only a confident director like Carlos Sorín (who won renown in '86 for La pelicula del rey) would dare, but it lets the audience safely relax into its elegant flow. Nothing frivolous or unnecessary, nothing less or more than utter poignancy, intrudes on this tale that transforms even a TV studio camera into a portal to infinity. If Bresson had been born in Argentina and raised by a neorealist daddy, he just might have made a film like this one. 6:45 p.m., Kabuki. Also April 27, 9 p.m., Kabuki; April 29, 9:15 p.m., PFA. (B. Ruby Rich)

Infernal Affairs (Andrew Lau and Alan Mak, Hong Kong, 2002) Fans of Hong Kong action extravaganzas and genre first-timers alike will dig this cops 'n' robbers spectacle directed by Andrew Lau (Storm Riders) and Alan Mak, with help from "visual consultant" Christopher Doyle (Wong Kar-wai's frequent cinematographer). Emoting mad internal torment are Andy Lau (Fulltime Killer) as a cop who's secretly a gangster and Tony Leung (In the Mood for Love) as a gangster who's secretly a cop. Assorted girlfriend roles are filled by H.K. megastars Sammi Cheng and Kelly Chen, with the omnipresent Eric Tsang (as a triad boss) and the immortal Anthony Wong (as the police commander) rounding out the rest of the cast. New-school plot devices – there are so many high-tech shenanigans that the characters' cell phones should be probably billed as costars – mix with classic noir elements such as clandestine meetings on rooftops and in movie theaters. Infernal Affairs takes itself a bit too seriously at times, but even the occasional overblown emotional note won't prevent you from having fun with this one. 9:45 p.m., PFA. Also Mon/21, 3 p.m., Castro; April 25, 7 p.m., Kabuki. (Cheryl Eddy)

The Man Without a Past (Aki Kaurismäki, Finland, 2002) In the dark and in the park, a solitary, silent man – the man of the title – is viciously beaten by some strangers. He seems dead, but no, he's just deadpan, and thus at home in the Finland of Aki Kaurismäki, where comedy and poverty are married whether they like it or not yet still capable of a fine romance. The Grand Prize winner at last year's Cannes Film Festival, this film is dramatically expansive and stylistically extroverted by Kaurismäki standards – invoking melodrama in particular – but a Salvation Army-style DIY sensibility is still in effect. (In one scene, kids pour hot water into the rooftop pipes of a storage space to provide a man's shower, an act similar to this director's approach to filmmaking.) Along with cosmic twin Jim Jarmusch, Kaurismäki has a silent-film sensibility: he's fond of sight gags (the anti-antics of an allegedly vicious dog are this movie's comic highlight), and his camera has never met a droll face it didn't want to have a love-laced staring war with. 9:45 p.m., Castro. (Huston)

Robert Capa: In Love and War (Anne Makepeace, USA, 2002) Hungarian refugee, antifascist, foremost chronicler of the Spanish civil war and D-Day, Life magazine's golden boy, notorious gambler and womanizer, Henri Cartier-Bresson's colleague, lover of Ingrid Bergman, the "greatest war photographer in the world" at age 25 and a journalistic martyr at 40: Robert Capa wore many distinctive hats during his lifetime. But as writer-director Anne Makepeace's extraordinary American Masters documentary reminds us, his greatest accomplishment was turning the camera lens into a weapon against inhumanity. Turning a biographical testament into a moving picture album might seem frivolous for such a seminal figure of photojournalism; the end result, however, captures a legacy in which artistry and history collided through a shutter. Though scattered voice-overs, reminiscing peers, and anecdotes form the usual documentary-narrative skeleton, Makepeace wisely lets Capa's groundbreaking body of work speak for itself when a thousand words prove ineffective. 6:30 p.m., Kabuki. Also Mon/21, 1 p.m., Kabuki. (Fear)

'The Skywalk Is Gone' (Tsai Ming-liang, Taiwan, 2002) As one bridge disappears, it is replaced by another. That's the paradox within Tsai Ming-liang's new short – a bridge between What Time Is It There? and his next full-length film, it's also a tribute to a missing skywalk in Taipei, a landmark that has figured prominently in most of the five interconnected features Tsai has made thus far. Even if a major monument is now missing from Tsai's map, other trademark fixtures – bathroom stalls, endless escalators – remain, and his series in progress might already be the grandest story in contemporary film, a narrative that one can enter, exit, and reenter as randomly as the protagonists, who are still plagued by missed connections and ID crises. Will Hsiao-kang (Tsai's muse Lee Kang-sheng, looking brawny and sporting a dye job) become a porn star? Tsai turns his eyes toward the sky instead of providing an answer. "The Skywalk Is Gone" screens with Too Young to Die. 7 p.m., Kabuki. Also Sun/20, 9:15 p.m., Kabuki; April 23, 7 p.m., PFA. (Huston)

So Close (Cory Yuen, Hong Kong, 2002) Veteran fight choreographer and Jet Li collaborator Cory Yuen has crafted a big old hunk of Grade A cheese in this female action fantasia. Lynn (Shu Qui) and Sue (Zhao Wei) are sisters with a familial grudge they've turned into a career path, using James Bond-ian techno-gadgets and Matrix-ian martial arts to infiltrate, overpower, and blackmail (or steal from) maximum-security corrupt multinational corporations. Sure, they shoot lots and lots of extras ... but for a good cause, sorta. Once her onetime boyfriend reenters the picture, however, unflappable Lynn considers leaving the family business entirely. But first she'll have to evade an evil CEO's assassins, elude a dogged search by butch cop Kong (Karen Mok) for the mysterious hit-chick Angel, and prevent rebellious little sis from getting into big trouble. The action set pieces are as awesome as they are absurd, even if at two solid hours So Close sags somewhat between them – granted a larger budget, Yuen proves bigger isn't quite better, since the film's (relative) good taste renders its connective tissue less giddily sexploitative than such prior Hong Kong babefests as Naked Killer and Sex and Zen. Still, this sure kicks Lara Croft's ass. Midnight, Kabuki. Also Mon/21, 4:15 p.m., Kabuki; April 27, 9 p.m., CineArts. (Harvey)

Sunrise (F.W. Murnau, USA, 1927) The silent era left behind no small number of visually splendid movies, but arguably the most stunningly conceived and executed of them all as a whole visual package is Sunrise, the sole Hollywood effort of German master F.W. Murnau (Faust, The Last Laugh). Even in 1927 – when it premiered just prior to The Jazz Singer, which triggered the whole talking-picture "craze" that never went away as predicted – its story was considered archaic and corny. But then as now, viewers could easily overlook the primitive moralizing while engulfed in Murnau's staggering, entirely soundstage-created symphony of images. George O'Brien plays a simple country fella whose head is turned from his simple country gal (Janet Gaynor, who had the lock on these roles for a decade) to more torrid zones defined by the city-slicked vamp (Margaret Livingston) who shows up to wreak havoc one day. Instantly whipped, he runs off to the empty glitter of the nearest megalopolis with her, trailed by the timorous but determined spouse. Guess how things turn out. Never mind: character and narrative depth are not the important things here. Murnau (with his cinematographers Karl Struss and Charles Rosher) elevates this crude melodrama to the level of mystical fable by dint of sheer visual poetry. A luminous archival print from New York's Museum of Modern Art is accompanied by a live score from Lambchop. 7 p.m., Castro. (Harvey)

Too Young to Die (Park Jin-Pyo, South Korea, 2002) This docu-romance/song of eternal youth has been tying its home country's censors in knots. The problem? It's stuffed with frankly photographed episodes of its senior-citizen stars rutting away like bunnies. Scored to the sound of buoyant concertinas and as seductive as the first flush of spring, Park Jin-Pyo's film probably doesn't need to be as eager to please as it is; it's the kind of material that hooks audiences right from its inaugural frame. Is it great cinema? All I know is, watching 73-year-old Chi-Gyu and 72-year-old Sun-Ye frolicking in the bathtub, or singing songs about sweet sixteens, or clipping one another's toenails, it was clear this is the way we all should hope to spend our golden years: ardent, invigorated, and ever ready for one more roll in the hay. Too Young to Die screens with "The Skywalk Is Gone." 7 p.m., Kabuki. Also Sun/20, 9:15 p.m., Kabuki; April 23, 7 p.m., PFA. (Stephens)

Saturday, April 19

Dracula: Pages from a Virgin's Diary (Guy Maddin, Canada, 2002) Black and white isn't quite black-and-white when you're looking through the deranged eyes of Guy Maddin. Stoked on Stoker, mad Maddin adds a variety of artificial tints – including piss-elegant yellow and Castro Street pink – to the supposedly color-free look of this filmed version of a Royal Winnipeg Ballet performance. Shot on video, Dracula: Pages from a Virgin's Diary isn't purist in its silent-film homage, though Maddin obviously wants to blow Dreyer by adding his own chapter to the mute-vampyr library. Just when the danced escapades of the dry-ice nymphs begin to resemble typical PBS "good for you" pabulum, Maddin launches into his modus operandi: hyperbole. The double entendres within the exclamation-crazed intertitles are hilarious, and the baby-eating imagery is nightmarish. Made for the CBC, this may not be "The Heart of the World" (Maddin's previous hard-Core work, and the best six minutes of 2001's SFIFF), but it's the most decadent and subversive public television since Todd Haynes's "Dottie Gets Spanked." 9:15 p.m., PFA. Also Tues/22, 7:15 p.m., Kabuki. (Huston)

Durval Discos (Anna Muylaert, Brazil, 2002) Brazilian writer-director Anna Muylaert's first feature starts looking like a raffish retro-Latin rhythm equivalent to High Fidelity, as pushing-40 Durval (Ary Franca) lives his stalled adolescent lifestyle running a record store, playing air guitar and jerking off in his bedroom, and being fed (badly) by the absentminded widow mum (Etty Fraser) he still lives with. Desperate for some improved home cooking, he convinces mom to hire a housekeeper – unexpectedly, the one they get is young, gorgeous, and a great cook (or so they think). But the next day she's mysteriously gone. More, she's left behind a little girl who thinks she's been taken to a horse ranch. I know what you're thinking: awwww, keee-yute. And there is a little of that (and it's genuinely cute, as opposed to artificially sweetened), but not much, before Durval Discos takes an entirely unforeseen – and very rewarding – left turn. It would be unfair to spoil things by revealing what direction this story eventually warps toward, but suffice it to say Muylaert has created a stylistically rigorous, deliciously deadpan, and extremely funny black comedy that should not be missed. 9:45 p.m., Kabuki. Also Tues/22, 4:30 p.m., Kabuki. (Harvey)

Fear and Trembling (Alain Corneau, France, 2003) Workplace culture clash boils at the center of the alternately hilarious and depressing story of Amelie, a Belgian woman (Sylvie Testud from Murderous Maids) so eager to spend a year working in Japan that she's willing to put up with anything to fulfill her dream. Within weeks of starting her job on the 44th floor of an enormous corporation, Amelie (who notes in one of her many wry, observant voice-overs that she has a college degree) has committed enough social foibles to be demoted from coffee server to copy maker to toilet scrubber. An attempt to rise above by completing a task that makes use of her French language skills only draws more ire, particularly from a female coworker (Kaori Tsuji) she idolizes. Set almost entirely in the confines of Amelie's Office Space-like hell, Fear and Trembling offers an excessively bleak view of Japanese culture, but plenty of dark humor as well. 9:15 p.m., Kabuki; Mon/21, 4 p.m., Kabuki. (Eddy)

He Who Must Die (Jules Dassin, France, 1957) Decades before Martin Scorsese brought home his own version of a Nikos Kazantzakis novel, Jules Dassin adapted Christ Recrucified (1948) into this striking morality play set in 1920s Greece, then suffering from famine under Turkish domination. Poised stylistically between the skintight caper-flick blueprint of 1956's Rififi and the feel-good culture clashes of 1960's Never on a Sunday, He Who Must Die (1957) stars Dassin's future wife, Melina Mercouri, in a test run of her hooker-with-a-heart-of-gold role in Sunday, playing the town masseuse who would be Mary Magdalene to Pierre Vaneck's Jesus in the annual passion play in a small Cretan town. The village becomes the site of a real-life biblical allegory when hypocritical, proto-NIMBY-ish town authorities turn away a horde of dying, impoverished war refugees from a neighboring hamlet. More polished than Pasolini's Gospel efforts and peopled with more complex characters than Charlton Heston's schlock operas, this newly restored film still resonates, particularly in light of Dassin's own blacklisting in Hollywood and events in today's Europe, which continues to grapple with its mixed feelings toward immigrants. Noon, Castro. Also Sun/20, 1:30 p.m., PFA. (Kimberly Chun)

Last Scene (Hideo Nakata, Japan, 2003) Hideo Nakata is best known as the director of the original Ring, so it may seem strange that his latest film is a melodrama. But melodramatic motifs – especially the type of maternal self-sacrifice associated with Stella Dallas – have lurked beneath the horror surfaces of both Ring and Nakata's Dark Water, providing the latter in particular with psychological tension. The riskiest thing about Last Scene is that it's a male melodrama, devoted to the mortality of an aging actor; the story portrays different eras in the Japanese film industry, allowing Nakata to spoof and pay homage to past directors and parody contemporaries. Unfortunately, Nakata hasn't found a corollary for the atmospheric, claustrophobic noir flair he brings to horror; the visuals here are inconsistent and banal. 9:30 p.m., Kabuki. Also April 23, 9:45 p.m., Kabuki. (Huston)

The Peter Sellers Story ... As He Filmed It (Anthony Wall and Peter Lydon, U.K., 2002) Legend has it that comedic actor extraordinaire Peter Sellers hid behind various personae since he admittedly had no discernible personality himself. What wasn't well known was that Sellers kept an extensive collection of 16mm home movies he shot around his estate and on film sets over the duration of his career. Originally discovered when Britain's Arena series was assembling its three-part Sellers biography, this documentary offers brief glimpses into the actor's life by telling his story exclusively through those found films. Fans of the icon will swoon over grainy footage ranging from the revelatory (Sellers discloses that Dr. Strangelove's accent was inspired by the photographer Weegee) to the randomly voyeuristic (see him on vacation with Princess Margaret!), but what's most fascinating is that such a famously private person never stopped living in front of a camera and that these self-made movies only seem to muddy the waters as to who the "real" man was behind all of that "reel" mythology. 6:45 p.m., Kabuki. Also, April 23, 1 p.m., Castro. (Fear)

Ten (Abbas Kiarostami, Iran/France, 2002) The inside of an automobile is apparently Abbas Kiarostami's favorite set, and it's easy to see why: doors and windows shut out the variables complicating the search for truth, and the gas pedal and yellow lines can't help moving the drama forward. Kiarostami has taken himself out of the front seat he so ably occupied in A Taste of Cherry, The Wind Will Carry Us, and ABC Africa and leaves his camera behind, à la Taxicab Confessions, to weld the best cinema vérité-style fiction in memory. In the car actors who've rehearsed scenarios argue and banter their way through 10 episodes in what passes brilliantly for the daily life of a Tehran divorcée. No one entering the car can expect a placid ride: son and driver bicker endlessly about her treatment of her ex-husband (whom – because of Iranian divorce law – she had to accuse of being a junkie in order to leave him); a prostitute gets an intrusive question and delivers a lecture-punch line to her host (wives are wholesalers, prostitutes, retailers). God, love, and vanity all get a seat for moments while the petty becomes mythic, the mythic petty. This is what we hope for when we enter Kiarostami's world, and this latest film more than delivers. 7 p.m., Kabuki. Also April 23, 6:30 p.m., Kabuki. (Susan Gerhard)

Whale Rider (Niki Caro, New Zealand/Germany, 2002) Spirituality can be a dirty word in a film review, connoting as it usually does soft-headed scripts with soft-focus dialogue. In times of war, though, spirituality can be damn useful, a necessary antidote to the callousness of daily battle coverage. Luckily, New Zealand has sent us this exquisite coming-of-age film about a young girl, Pai, in a Maori tribe in which contemporary life is animated by the spirits, just below the surface offshore, that call out to her for relief. Pai's struggle to overcome her grandfather's resistance to her gender and win her rightful spot as leader is the main story here, and it's a moving one, but Niki Caro's delicate fable rises or falls on the central performance of Keisha Castle-Hughes as the 12-year-old heroine. And rise it does, as she proves herself a flat-out natural with charisma to burn. What with the New Zealand landscapes, a cast of genuine nonprofessionals, and whales too, it's no wonder that Whale Rider has proved to be a surefire hit. 9 p.m., Castro. Also Tues/22, 1 p.m., Kabuki. (Rich)

Sunday, April 20

All Hell Let Loose (Susan Taslimi, Sweden, 2002) The not-quite-prodigal stripper daughter of an eternally enraged Middle Eastern immigrant returns home to Sweden for her sister's wedding. Expect – as the title, All Hell Let Loose, suggests – chaos of the dysfunctional-immigrant-family-circus variety. Spiky-haired bad girl Minoo (Melinda Kinnaman) plays only one prominent part in the female troubles of her father (Hassan Brijany): his wife is flirting with the repair man, his other daughter is getting hot and heavy with her fiancé in the elevator shaft, and his mother just can't stop nagging. Grittier than My Big Fat Greek Wedding and warmer than What Have I Done to Deserve This?, All Hell Let Loose doesn't quite resolve the powder-keg dynamic set up by Iranian native and director Susan Taslimi, but her loving take on a milieu of fellow Middle Easterners who are struggling to get by and preserve their sanity in tight quarters and in an alien culture, deserves a cozy spot far from the flames. 9:45 p.m., Kabuki. Also April 27, noon, Kabuki. (Chun)

Dark Side of the Heart 2 (Eliseo Subiela, Argentina, 2001) The sequel to Eliseo Subiela's 1993 carnival of carnality finds the original's poet hero, Oliverio (Darío Grandinetti), right where we left him – still pulling "birds" amid a soundtrack of sexy, sexy saxophones and still pining for the fantasy woman who can literally take flight. After sleeping his way through several erotic dead ends, he meets a Spanish tightrope walker (Ariadna Gil) who could be the answer to his prayers. Romantic bliss might be theirs, if only they can elude the smartly dressed figure of Death and the omnipresent biker known as Time. Keeping beat with his first Heart of darkness, Subiela marinates this sexual farce in a Felliniesque soup (oh, there will be circuses and midgets!) spiked with his own existential aphrodisiac. Whether you find this brew self-indulgent or intoxicatingly sweet, however, may well depend on whether you wear love's timekeeper on your sleeve or near your unzipped fly. 6 p.m., Kabuki. Also April 26, 9:15 p.m., PFA; April 28, 6:45 p.m., CineArts. (Fear)

The Day I Will Never Forget (Kim Longinotto, U.K., 2002) Prolific documentarian Kim Longinotto (Divorce Iranian Style, Gaea Girls) takes on a subject completely foreign to most Western folk: female circumcision, as practiced by a Somali community in Kenya. Yep, it's painful to imagine, and it's even more painful to hear a little girl's screams while she's having the "operation" (done with a razor and little or no anesthetic) performed. Intent on not simply condemning a tradition that seems strange to foreigners, Longinotto attempts to explore the reasons behind the procedure, but the "it's our culture" argument seems pretty weak when it's clear girls who are circumcised – most against their will – suffer discomfort and medical problems for years thereafter. Several girls (including a runaway bride) and women (including a nurse who is strongly opposed to the operation) are profiled, and the film ends on a high note as a group of girls taking advantage of Kenya's first anticircumcision law score a groundbreaking legal victory. 4 p.m., PFA. Also April 28, 9:15 p.m., Kabuki. (Eddy)

The Death of Klinghoffer (Penny Woolcock, U.K., 2003) Having had very mixed feelings about The Death of Klinghoffer previously (in its San Francisco Opera incarnation), and composer John Adams in general (Harmonium aside, his oeuvre is yours to keep), I approached this BBC version with cautious expectations. But Penny Woolcock's adaptation – musically faithful to the note but visually far-flung from Peter Sellars's original stage production – turns out to be one of the best filmed 20th-century operas ever (or maybe just best filmed operas, period), one that for my money makes a much better case for the work than live dramatization did. The subject is, of course, the 1985 hijacking of the Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro by four Palestinian men who, holding the ship's populace captive at gunpoint, demanded their comrades in jail be released. The vociferous objections from one wheelchair-bound Israeli, Klinghoffer, resulted in his being the only passenger killed before the Palestinians surrendered to authorities. Shot in an utterly convincing docudrama style, with a cast of equally naturalistic actual singers (only one lead is a dubbed actor), the opera's controversially even-handed "reportage" style grows more potent – not to mention more powerful and moving – here than ever before. 5:30 p.m., Castro. Also Mon/21, 7 p.m., PFA. (Harvey)

The Decay of Fiction (Pat O'Neill, USA, 2002) Is that Joan Crawford's voice you hear, talking about a sick mother? Why yes, and it's just one of the many ghosts that haunt the empty hallways of Los Angeles's abandoned Ambassador Hotel in this avant-garde response to Hollywood myth. The subject matter and style might call Kenneth Anger to mind, but Pat O'Neill's Decay of Fiction is closer in tone and flow to works like The Shining, Mulholland Drive, and – set adrift on memory, each scene an overlapping wave – the autobiographical features of Terence Davies. In other words, this is a highly personal labor of movie love by someone who has passed through the looking glass. Though closed down in 1989 and scheduled to be demolished in 1994, the Ambassador (where Bobby Kennedy was assassinated, an event included in Decay's soundtrack collage) still stands today. See-through phantoms in satin gowns and swimsuits navigate the Coconut Grove and swimming pool, coasting over carpets with diamond patterns. If these characters are as transparent as they look, it's only a reflection of the limits – the fatal allure – of a movielike life. 3 p.m., Kabuki (screening and ceremony; O'Neill receives the Persistence of Vision Award). Also Tues/22, 7 p.m., PFA. (Huston)

Madame Satã (Karim Aïnouz, Brazil/France, 2002) This portrait of Brazilian folk hero João Francisco dos Santos is to Fassbinder and Jack Smith what City of God is to Scorsese: a stylish knockoff. As the titular character, Lázaro Ramos fills a brave man's shoes – and a big diva's pumps – with outsize, primal fearlessness. Much like the flaming creature it profiles, Karim Aïnouz's camera is sometimes giddy (shaking along with the spangled, beaded, and gold-glittered fabrics it clasps in close-up) and sometimes fierce (prowling the wet grime and petty crime of Rio de Janeiro's dark alleys). The narrative momentum is erratic, and a more apt title would have been Madame Satã's Formative Years: the movie ends before Santos has even taken his fabled, Cecil B. DeMille-inspired name. Nevertheless, it's great to see exactly the kind of queer – ever ready to fuck hot criminals, fistfight asshole cops, and gun down homophobes – you'd never find in today's lame U.S. gay films, and better still, to know he's not a fictional creation. 9:30 p.m., Castro. (Huston)

Marooned in Iraq (Bahman Ghobadi, Iran, 2002) Kurdish Iranian filmmaker Bahman Ghobadi follows his acclaimed first feature, A Time for Drunken Horses (2000), with another rousing portrait of the Kurdish lives straddling the border region between Iran and Iraq, this time with darkly comic shadings (reminiscent of Emir Kusturica's films) informing the performances of his exceptional nonprofessional cast. A renowned Kurdish singer, Mirza (real-life crooner Shahab Ebrahimi), goes in search of ex-wife Hanareh (Iran Ghobadi) after receiving a plea for help as Saddam Hussein's bombs and chemicals stir a mass exodus to the Iranian border in the wake of the Iran-Iraq war. Reluctantly accompanied by his musician sons Barat (Faegh Mohammadi) and Audeh (Allah-Morad Rashtian), he travels by motorbike to Iraq, where Hanareh fled 23 years before with Mirza's friend and band mate Seyed to continue singing (Iran bars women from publicly performing). Opening onto a colorful landscape, the film develops a cool and funny, mildly absurd narrative that gently gives way to a poignant meditation on loyalty, sacrifice, and endurance amid the arbitrary cruelty and merciless uncertainty of war. Ghobadi's focus on a band of musicians (and like stars everywhere, they're objects of admiration, respect, idle gossip, and even ridicule) acts as a romantic strain throughout, and a beautifully apt invitation to identify with, rather than merely objectify, the humanity of his larger subject. 3:15 p.m., Kabuki. Also April 25, 9:15 p.m., PFA. (Robert Avila)

Off the Charts: The Song-Poem Story (Jamie Meltzer, USA, 2002) In a post-Warhol age in which everyone's ready for his or her 15 minutes of Real World fame, it's only natural that a culture of fans, collectors, and creators built up around the business – and, at times, art – of setting aspiring songwriters' poems to music. Off the Charts: The Song-Poem Story hooks on the proposition that you too can make money writing songs and takes a graceful look at some of the stories behind the ads that promise TRL-style chart-toppers – the hopeful misfits and their exquisitely skewed lyrics, and the speedy and equally bizarre song-poem entrepreneurs who transform their clients' sometimes dense, sometimes divine scribblings into song. The end products of these rapid-fire business transactions – in which factory-style commerce meets a deeply personal and often deeply weird art – include some tender, strange music ("Little Rug Bug"); at least one amazing, if familiar, story (that of sax player Ellery Eskelin and his relationship through song-poems with his father, Rodney Eskelin, a.k.a. Rodd Keith, a.k.a. Rod Rogers); and some moments that equal if not surpass those in painfully revealing docs such as Grey Gardens (the sweetly oddball Midwestern songwriter Gary Forney singing "Chicken Insurrection" at a mom-and-pop folk festival or the song-poem speed-singer Gene Merlino sniping with his band and name-checking Frank Sinatra and Ray Conniff). Noon, Kabuki. Also Sun/27, 9:30 p.m., Kabuki. (Chun)

Tale of a Naughty Girl (Buddhadeb Dasgupta, India, 2002) Naughty is an apt word for Buddhadeb Dasgupta, whose movies comically expose the bodily urges and conniving thoughts people keep hidden. The homoeroticism of his last film, The Wrestlers, was so blatant that it shed its subtext, even if the two men involved never shed their clothes, instead remaining clueless (and thus not blasphemous). This time around, Dasgupta focuses on the story of a smart girl whose brothel-based mother would rather sell her body than school her mind. The crudity of his dubbed soundtracks remains (and has a charm), but Dasgupta has few peers as an observer of nature's oblivious beauty and immense stature. He's also fond of tiny bits of wry metacommentary: early on, a broken, looped piece of ridiculous Bollywood footage forecasts this movie's conflict and resolution. 3:30 p.m., Kabuki. Also Tues/22, 6:45 p.m., Kabuki. (Huston)

Woman of Water (Hidenori Sugimori, Japan, 2002) A traumatized young woman (pop star UA) who can cause rainstorms at will inherits a bathhouse near the foot of Mt. Fuji. She takes on a drifter (the mighty Tadanobu Asano) as both a handyman and a lover, and soon the sento is doing record business. The drifter's fire-obsessive past, however, may prove to be a snake in Eden. First-time filmmaker Hidenori Sugimori has created a moody masterpiece, spinning a fable of love among the elements. Woman of Water is imbued with the most beautifully bruise-colored images ever committed to celluloid. Both UA and Asano lend an erotic edge to the film, but it's Sugimori's vision of nature – distanced but drunkenly lush, minimalist yet overwhelming, both serene and fatalistic – that's the real star of the show. There's always one festival entry that proves to be a true treasure unearthed, and this is the one. Do not miss it. 9:30 p.m., Kabuki. Also April 25, 4 p.m., Kabuki; April 27, 3:15 p.m., PFA. (Fear)

Monday, April 21

Eat, Sleep, No Women (Heiner Stadler, Germany, 2002) German journalist-filmmaker Heiner Stadler's pointed travelogue cum cine essay chronicles the world's activities during several days in October – specifically, the weekend the United States began bombing Afghanistan one month after Sept. 11, 2001. Composed of warped media coverage and a variety of asides from average citizens (a Pakistani painter, a gold prospector in South America, a French street musician), Eat, Sleep, No Women's attempt at personalizing the global reaction to U.S. military aggression is a fascinating if muddled mixture of portraiture and polemicizing; the conceit of giving a voice to the "common man" is consistently undone by the voice-over's liberal use of Sun Tsu quotes, and some pre-2001 footage cuts its vérité, day-in-the-life credibility by degrees. Still, the attempt to turn the moment that Kabul and Kandahar became household names into a mural finds its focus in the details, turning the film into a Mondo Cane of the mundane anxieties surrounding life during today's perpetual wartime blues. 9:45 p.m., PFA. Also April 23, 1 p.m., Kabuki; April 26, 1:15 p.m., Kabuki. (Fear)

The Good Old Naughty Days (Olivier Lupczynsky, editor, France, 2002) Dating more or less from 1905 to 1930 (though most titles were made in the '20s), the 12 silent French shorts packaged here were primarily designed to be shown in the waiting rooms of brothels, amusing patrons – and no doubt giving them some ideas – as they awaited their girl. Due to the hardcore sex acts filmed, they were anonymously made, often by professionals secretly moonlighting from their day jobs on "legitimate" films (and frequently borrowing the other movies' sets and costumes). Vintage porn is always cool; these black-and-white antiques are charmingly even more so. What's really surprising about them is that while the scenarios are predictable fantasy ones – monk spies on, then joins naughty nuns; teacher must spank naughty schoolgirls, which leads to other "punishments," etc. – the sex acts are a lot more diverse than they would have been in standard American porn, then or now. In short, everybody does everybody. That means that there's not just your typical "lesbian" stuff, but also that whenever more than one man is involved in the high jinks, he invariably (if briefly) fucks the other one. Quelle surprise! And nobody blinks, just as pussy eating is indulged quite as enthusiastically (and indeed somewhat more frequently) as cock sucking. Add to those delights the intermittent explanatory cards deploying archaic sex slang (men "exercise the ferret," have "beef bayonets," and a "Rumpleforeskin"), and you can keep your freedom fries – it's still Vive la France for me. 10 p.m., Castro. (Harvey)

The Legend of Suriyothai (Prince Chatri Chalerm Yukol, Thailand, 2001) A modern master of both dialectical montage and muckraking exploitation, Prince Chatri Chalerm Yukol revolutionized 1970's Thai cinema with a series of politically loaded crowd pleasers, the boldest of which was 1974's Hotel Angel, a hard-hitting and subsequently unsurpassed exposé of his nation's prostitution industry. The Legend of Suriyothai, a would-be epic about a legendary 16th-century queen who sacrificed herself in a battle defending her husband's empire, could have been the prince's gesamkunstwerk, a totalizing vision of subjugation Siamese style. Instead, the original three-hour version of the film seemed both bloated and emaciated: this most expensive, and highest-grossing, Thai film ever made turned out to be a high school history lesson filled with too many characters and not enough soul. Enter Francis Ford Coppola, whose friendship with the prince dates back to late '60s southern California, where the future Godfather of the Napa Valley new wave met the prince while he was studying geology (with a minor in film production) at USC. Coppola has now recut and reorganized Suriyothai for international advantage, ostensibly tightening the drama and trimming the running time. Odds are it's still a mess, but the grandeur of its failure is still worth a gander, as is the galaxy of Thai celebrities – particularly the scar-faced Sorapong Chatri, the director's longtime leading man – that populates its frames. 6 p.m., Castro. (Stephens)

Tuesday, April 22

Comandante (Oliver Stone, USA/Spain, 2003) Anyone who thinks the Great Man theory of history died a slow death in academia should see how Oliver Stone revives it big-time in this interview with Fidel Castro. You have to admire Stone: no tricks, no Ken Burns-style tilts and pans, just a camera squarely pointed at El Comandante and Stone firing questions. Some are inane (no, Castro doesn't take antidepressants or go to a therapist) and some are just I'm-no-groupie bravado (hey, what about elections?). Still, there's no denying the fascination Castro still exercises even in his clearly diminished condition. While he can look as nutty as the Miami Cubans say he is – pacing around the conference table in his, gasp, Nikes to show his exercise regimen – his faculties are as intact as hell, and his monologues hold their own against Stone's archival footage. Yeah, it's Fidel and Me in its own way, but the dueling megalomaniacs can make for good viewing. 9:15 p.m., PFA. Also April 30, 9:30 p.m., Kabuki; May 1, 5 p.m., Kabuki. (Rich)

Wednesday, April 23

Bus 174 (José Padilha, Brazil, 2002) Brazil's immense contradictions (well, at least pre-Lula) between dire poverty and populist rhetoric are on full display in this unusually thoughtful investigation into a notorious bus hijacking that ends, somewhat unpredictably, in a measure of tragedy. Widely videotaped by television news crews at the time, the incident could have easily ended up a simple tabloid story. Instead, gifted documentarians José Padilha and Marcos Prado insist on tossing this pebble of a scandal into the water, so to speak, to allow their own antitabloid camera to trace the ripples it sets off. As they investigate the actual motivations and influences that carried ill-fated hijacker Sandro do Nascimento to his grand showdown, the filmmakers uncover a history of trauma and tragedy so acute that their archival documentary quickly develops a dimension of fictional drama, as though the news had been written by an accomplished classical playwright with a feel for doomed destiny. Padilha and Prado refuse to separate their individual from the violent society that created him, and in so doing have created a documentary masterpiece. 6:45 p.m., Kabuki. Also April 24, 2:30 p.m., Castro; April 27, 6 p.m., PFA. (Rich)

The Devils (Christophe Ruggia, France/Spain, 2002) Two kids, Chloe and Joseph, roam around France in a bad imitation of Agnès Varda's protagonist in Vagabonde. Chloe is crazy, or maybe autistic, or perhaps developmentally challenged. It's never explained, just demonstrated. Joseph, her younger brother, is overprotective. And alternately angry, confused, and sometimes hopeful. The two are on a mission to escape – from mental hospitals and foster homes, respectively – and to reunite with mom. Anticlimax is a constant; transcendence is absent. Once Chloe turns up naked, it's hard not to think the roughly staged film's a setup for just that, given the absence of other motivation. Director Christophe Ruggia has already been the subject of comparisons to Truffaut, but don't believe them. Lacking the grace and artistry of a filmmaker like Erick Zonca, whose Dreamlife of Angels and Little Thief covered similarly volatile ground, Ruggia comes off as exploitative and heavy-handed. 8:45 p.m., Kabuki. Also April 25, 3 p.m., Kabuki. (Rich)

The Man of the Year (José Henrique Fonseca, Brazil, 2003) An impressive first directorial effort for José Henrique Fonseca (who's been an assistant to Hector Babenco and Walter Salles), this distinctly Brazilian spin on GoodFellas and the like centers on Máiquel (Murilo Bencício), a Rio de Janeiro slum dweller whose prospects are zilch until he loses a soccer bet. Having to dye his hair blond as a result, he gets ridiculed by an irksome little punk, whom he rashly (albeit in semi-self-defense) shoots dead. Awaiting the worst, Máiquel is shocked to discover that the consequences of murder, in this case, are sweet: Since everybody hated his victim, they shower Máiquel with gifts; even the police congratulate him on a job well done. Suddenly respected – and with a beautiful girlfriend as a bonus – Máiquel slowly drifts into more "cleanup" jobs, eliminating apparently "bad" people under the direction of some rich, almost fascistically conservative old farts. From there it's no big leap to protection-racketeering and mini-godfatherdom. Of course, violence begets violence, and cheating on girlfriend cum wife Cledir (Claudia Abreu) with underage Erica (Natália Lage) further assures that Máiquel's good fortune will soon go seriously awry. Mixing noirish melodrama with streaks of black comedy, the handsomely shot, wide-screen flick (which is based on a novel by leading Brazilian author Patricia Melo) requires you to believe the gorgeous Benício could ever have been a broke, dateless loser. Once you make that leap, The Man of the Year is near-perfect semipulp entertainment. 9:15 p.m., PFA. Also April 25, 9:30 p.m., Kabuki; April 29, 6:45 p.m., Kabuki. (Harvey)

My Voice (Flora Gomes, Portugal/France/Luxembourg, 2002) For those unfamiliar with African musicals – let alone those of director Flora Gomes, who's dominated the genre for nearly two decades – just think of airy French ones, albeit with a stronger rhythmic pulse. Indeed, Gomes's latest has distinct overlaps with the likes of The Young Girls of Rochefort and Jeanne and the Perfect Guy. There's the same offhand attitude toward narrative, the same charming yet very casual choreography, the same slightly brightened (i.e., much more color-coordinated) take on everyday life, the same way in which characters don't so much burst into song as they do slip into it. Heroine Vita (N'Diaye) is a beauteous, lanky young woman who leaves her native Guinea-Bissau for five years' study in Paris, where she meets her true love, a musician. But he gets her to break the family taboo – which demands female offspring never sing, or calamity will follow – and once they've topped the European pop charts, Vita worries her mother will die from shock once the news hits. So she devises an elaborate scheme to retire this superstitious "curse" for good. My Voice sports a confectionary visual palette, light social commentary, and an insinuating Afropop soundtrack. What's not to like? 6:45 p.m., Castro. Also April 24, 4 p.m., Kabuki. (Harvey)

Nothing to Lose (Danny Pang, Hong Kong/Thailand/Singapore, 2002) Danny Pang (codirector of deaf-mute-hired-killer yarn Bangkok Dangerous) returns to the world of off-kilter crime with Nothing to Lose, which begins on a rooftop where two young, reckless types – sad-faced gambler Somchai and wild child Gogo – meet as they're both about to choose suicide over dealing with their problems. A mutual decision to postpone dying leads to a dangerous string of misdeeds, escalating from the mildly criminal ("Dead people don't pay," Gogo explains as the pair dashes from a restaurant after an enormous meal) to the downright stupid (robbing banks, pissing off gangsters, shooting at cops). The media soon join the fray, nicknaming the duo "Bonnie and Clyde" (what else?). This fast-paced tale follows a familiar story arc, but there are enough twists – like, Gogo and Somchai don't fall in love – to keep things jumping; charismatic Thai actress Fresh, who plays Gogo, supplies more than enough interest with her endless array of wigs and disguises. 3:30 p.m., Kabuki. Also April 25, 10 p.m., Kabuki. (Eddy)