Out of Focus

MISCELLANEOUS MISCELLANY: WEEKEND NOTES BIG ON THEATRE

I'm having motivational issues, so instead of motivating myself, I think I'll try to motivate anyone who happens by here wondering, "Hmm, what's good in New York that I may not know about this weekend." I'm sure I'm the only person with a blog doing that, so it should come in quite handy.

• Closing this Sunday is The Black Eyed by Betty Shameih. I just caught the show on Tuesday, and although I found the show somewhat uneven with a bit too much preachy statement making here and there, there is more than enough in Shameih's writing and a couple of the performances to recommend catching it. The show looks at four Palestinian women who meet in Limbo, all looking for men in their personal histories who they believe might be behind a secret door with all the other "martyrs." One woman is Delilah (as in "Samson and ..."); also there is Tamam, who suffered brutality at the hands of Crusaders; and then two from the modern era: Aiesha, who grew-up in a Palestinian refugee camp and became a suicide bomber, and a woman known only as The Architect, a Palestinian-American killed on one of the 9/11 flights. Jeanine Serralles' performance as The Architect is reason enough to sit through The Black Eyed mostly brisk 85-odd minutes. Her character begins mostly in the background, but when she takes command of the stage near the end, she is absolutely tremendous, filled with nervous energy and using her movement and voice to absolutely captivate the audience. For me, this was important because while I also enjoyed Emily Swallow as Delilah, I found Lameece Issaq and especially Aysan Celik (as Tamam and Aiesha, respectively) mediocre at best. The play begins and roughly ends with the words "Unanswered questions. Unquestioned answers." Occasionally, Shameih hits us over the head with this theme, but her examinations of violence, faith, violence in the name of faith, female identity and power (or lack of), U.S. imperialism. the Palesitnian struggle combined with diverse opinions about the best way to solve it -- depicted most specifically between Aiesha and The Architect -- are generally fascinating and well-handled. Only when Shameih becomes a bit too polemical and do the lines sound like parts of a speech from a protest rally do things get tedious, but not so much to completely undermine the show. If you can get to New York Theater Workshop in the East Village and in to see it (my performance on Tuesday was sold out), it would be well worth your time.
  

• Frost/Nixon, a fascinating look at the behind-the-scenes goings-on of David Frost's famous interview with Richard Nixon in 1977, also closes on Sunday. Written by Peter Morgan (also screenwriter of The Queen and The Last King of Scotland), the show brought Frank Langella a very-well-deserved Tony Award for his moving, sympathetic and riveting portrayal of the only American president to ever resign from office. The play is fascinating not because of how it recreates segments of these very famous interviews, but rather due to its incisive examination of not only a tragic plummet from power into -- and then eventually, even sadder, out of -- self-delusion as well as, and even more impressively, a wonderful look at the power of television. In 1977, a full 17 years after the Kennedy/Nixon televised debate that had its own impact on that presidential election, the true reach and influence of television as a forum and its strength and differences from older media such as radio and newspapers was still not fully recognized. For a piece of theater to do such a great job showing it is marvelous. Four performances left: get there if you can. And if you can't, oh well ... Ron Howard will be directing Langella and Michael Sheen (starring in the show as Frost) in a feature version for next year. I'm not sure whether that's necessarily a good thing, though.

LIVE-IN MAID: A UNIVERSAL STUDY OF CLASS AND FRIENDSHIP

At what point does personal memory and experience get in the way of critical observation? It's a question that popped into my mind during a screening of Live-in Maid, which opened today at Film Forum. Argentinian director Jorge Gaggero's debut feature is a small picture tackling a big subject: the class struggle in Argentina. Norma Aleandro plays Beba, a recent upper class divorcee who struggles to stay within her non-existent budget and survives in part by pawning personal items. She refuses to cut-back, and the one item she believes she owns but couldn't (nor wouldn't) ever pawn is her maid, Dora (Norma Argentina). Beba drinks ... a lot; and Dora is always there to clean-up after her. Beba yells; Dora listens. That is, until Dora decides she can't take it anymore and after 30 years with the same family, she quits.

The plot of Live-in Maid is almost secondary. The focus of the film is on the characters of these two women and, in particular, their relationship with each other. Beba is disturbed by the fact that her daughter -- living abroad in Madrid -- rarely calls, and yet Beba acts like a spoiled kid herself, expecting Dora to mother her. While Dora spends much of the week living in a small, sparse room off the kitchen, she does have her own home with her partner Miguel, and when she wants to take a scheduled day off to go buy flooring for their little house, Beba won't allow it because its their turn to host the ladies for cards. Meanwhile, Beba hasn't paid Dora in several months but expects her to be there always.

Once they're apart, however, they both realize how much they need each other. In fact, what we see in Live-in Maid is an odd but fascinating co-dependency. When Dora is around Miguel all the time, she notices that not all of Beba's criticisms about him are invalid. When Beba no longer has Dora to complain to, she realizes how well she had it before; how nobody else cares to listen to her or how she really now needs to take care of herself. The epiphany they each have is that their lives outside the relationship they have with each other is relatively empty, and in reality, they are each other's best friend.

HUMP DAY MISCELLANEOUS MISCELLANY: MOVIE NOTES TO SEE AND BE SEEN

Rather than sit here stewing as to how to respond to the variety of topics bouncing around my brain this morning, I figured a brief purging would prove helpful ... at least to me! So:

• I mentioned it last Friday, but now I'm demanding it: Get thee to Film Forum to see Le Doulos, the brilliant noir from French master Jean-Pierre Melville. Its run ends tomorrow (Jul 19) and it really is not-to-miss.
  

• While you're at , you might consider sticking around for a screening of Live-In Maid, an Argentinian film just now getting its first U.S. release, although it won a Special Jury Prize at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival. It's a really interesting film depicting a very particular social interaction between classes with both humor and empathy. Filmmaker Jorge Gaggero will be at the 8:10 PM showings tonight through Friday. A fuller review will come later today.
  

• Jim Browne is a fellow Associate Programmer of mine at Tribeca, but he also runs a small distribution company, Argot Pictures. Opening today at the IFC Center for a one-week run is the documentary Summercamp!. I've yet to see it, but plan to this weekend. And hey look, I'm creating unintentional post thematic consistency by having a summer camp element here to follow yesterday's mention of This American Life "Notes on Camp." Good blogger.
  

• I finally made it to Knocked Up last night. I hadn't been avoiding it by any means, but for one reason or another -- start time was inconvenient; didn't fit in with a schedule of other movies; not playing at the theater complex I'm going to -- until I left work yesterday determined to get to this movie, I hadn't made it. I understand what all the hype is about: it's an at-times-hysterical and very relatable film. And yet, maybe some of my friends had hyped it too much. I remember laughing harder more consistently during The 40-Year-Old Virgin. More importantly, the film runs over two hours, and there is really no reason for this. It definitely starts to drag here-and-there in the last 40 minutes (if not sooner). I may write more later, and it's still a definite thumbs-up, but I certainly don't find it to be the second coming of comedy films. However, I may adapt Ben's brilliant line as he and Alison are drunkenly getting naked: "You're prettier than me." Sheer genius.
  

PAPER DOLLS: SEEING IS BELIEVING BUT NOT COMPLETELY COMPELLING

It's so easy to fall behind, as I've managed to do thanks to a very busy couple of days. Last week, I went to a screening of Paper Dolls, an intriguing documentary which opened Wednesday at Film Forum for a two week run. I say intriguing, but I don't know that I can truly endorse the film as successful.

I left the screening and went to meet some friends for lunch. For the rest of the day, I told virtually everyone I ran into that earlier I had seen a documentary about Filipino transvestites, living in Israel and working as caregivers to elderly orthodox Jews (including some Hasidim). Without fails, mouths would drop, at which point I would generally say, "No, I only wish I could have made that up." Of course, the obvious questions that would then be thrown my way would start with, "Is it any good?" followed by longer variations of "Why?" and "How?" Ahhh ... there's the rub.

Filmmaker Tomer Heymann introduces us to a group of Filipinos who have all immigrated to Israel within the previous decade. They are friends who perform in drag as a lip-synching group called the Paper Dolls. They each seem to be wonderfully kind, generous and loving human beings who take their jobs very seriously, often become close -- sometimes even like family -- to those to whom they're providing care, and in general enjoy living in Israel. But their lives there are not easy, and they each exist straddling a fine line of employment; if they lose their jobs, they instantly become illegal immigrants and can be deported.

Heymann focuses on the lives of his five featured personalities Sally, Chiqui, Giorgio, Jan, and Cheska: their daily routines, their ambitions as performers and their relationships with their employers and each others. But what he never examines are those two basic questions: how and why? What made them leave the Philippines in the first place and if so, why Israel? If Israel is actually as potentially unfriendly to immigrants -- gay or otherwise -- why not the US? Or Canada? Or England, which by the end of the film seems almost the obvious choice?What do orthodox Jews, many of whom live in relatively closed communities and have very strict beliefs against homosexuality, look for and employ these people in their homes? If it's so relatively simple to get kicked out of the country (as the film shows), how did they get in and find their jobs in the first place?

These are just a few questions that Heymann completely avoids yet watching the film I found completely necessary. I'm sure there are logical and good answers to each of these, but Heymann doesn't give us a clue. What he does do well, however, is sympathetically portray in each of these people, forcing us to not just sympathize but truly like each of them. They share several traits, most notably a visible and heartfelt love for life as well as others, especially those people who are really their employers. The relationship between Sally and Chaim Amir is particularly touching. The two have a father-child relationship that is likely closer than those had by many members' of the audience. There is genuine affection between the two. Some of the best scenes involve Sally reading in Hebrew to Chaim and watching him try to correct her pronunciation when she makes minor but vital mistakes.

Paper Dolls is by no means boring, and it certainly forces you to feel for these people who do nothing but help others yet are still ostracized and looked down upon by many, and obviously not just in Israel. But in its attempts to grab at your heartstrings, the film ignores vital elements that make its very subject matter so interesting in the first place. Sadly, feeling without understanding just isn't that fulfilling, and so Heymann's film proves to be as thin as real paper dolls.