Banksy reveals only so much of himself in new documentary
EXIT THROUGH THE GIFT SHOP (A Banksy Movie, 2010)
Landmark Sunshine Cinema, 143 East Houston St.
Lincoln Plaza Cinema, 1886 Broadway
Opens Friday, April 16
www.banksyfilm.com
www.landmarktheatres.com
www.lincolnplazacinema.com
In 1999, L.A.-based French shopkeeper and amateur videographer Thierry Guetta discovered that he was related to street artist Invader and began filming his cousin putting up his tile works. Guetta, who did not know much about art, soon found himself immersed in the underground graffiti scene. On adventures with such famed street artists as Shepard Fairey, Swoon, Ron English, and Borf, Guetta took thousands of hours of much-sought-after video. The amateur videographer was determined to meet Banksy, the anarchic satirist who has been confounding authorities around the world with his striking, politically sensitive works perpetrated right under their noses, from England to New Orleans to the West Bank. Guetta finally gets his wish and begins filming the seemingly unfilmable as Banksy, whose identity has been a source of controversy for more than a decade, allows Guetta to follow him on the streets and invites him into his studio. But as he states at the beginning of his brilliant documentary, EXIT THROUGH THE GIFT SHOP, Banksy—who hides his face from the camera in new interviews and blurs it in older footage—turns the tables on Guetta, making him the subject of this wildly entertaining film.
Guetta is a hysterical character, a hairy man with a thick accent who plays the jester in Banksy’s insightful comedy of errors. Billed as “the world’s first Street Art disaster movie,” EXIT, which is narrated by Welsh actor Rhys Ifans (DANNY DECKCHAIR) and features a soundtrack by Portishead’s Geoff Barrow sandwiched in between Richard Hawley’s declaratory “Tonight the Streets Are Ours,” is all the more exciting and intriguing because the audience doesn’t know what is actually true and what might be staged; although the film could be one hundred percent real and utterly authentic, significant parts of it could also be completely made up. Who’s to say that’s even Banksy underneath the black hood, talking about Guetta, who absurdly rechristens himself Mr. Brainwash? It could very well be Banksy’s F FOR FAKE, Orson Welles’s marvelous 1974 pseudo-documentary about art forger Elmyr de Hory, or it could be on the straight and narrow from start to finish. No matter. EXIT THROUGH THE GIFT SHOP is riotously funny, regardless of how you feel about street art, Banksy, and especially the art market itself (as the title so wryly implies).
For information on Banksy’s sole New York City exhibition, held in fall 2008, visit here.
“Mariko Okada: The Discreet Charm of the Adulteress,” the final section of the Japan Society’s three-part “Mad, Bad . . . & Dangerous to Know: Three Untamed Beauties” film series, begins on April 13 with a screening of Yoshishige Yoshida’s fifth collaboration with Okada and continues on April 14 with the fascinating erotic tale THE AFFAIR. In the latter, also known as FLAMES OF LOVE, Okada stars as Oriko, an unhappily married woman who wants a divorce from her cheating husband, Furuhata (Tadahiko Sugano). In a flashback, she shows her displeasure with her widowed mother (Yoshie Minami), who is carrying on a heated affair with young sculptor Mitsuhuru (Isao Kimura); in the current day, she seeks out the Noguchi-like artist to find out about his relationship with her now-dead mother but learns a lot more than she expected. Meanwhile, Furuhata’s sister, Yokio (Shigako Shimegi), tries to get the traditional, old-fashioned Oriko out of the house and partying with her three male friends, who smoke cigarettes, drink beer, and break out in sudden groovy dances at the spur of the moment. But when Oriko—who still wears kimonos and worries about what is considered proper in a society that is changing drastically all around her—spies on Yokio having hot, casual sex with a common worker (KILL!’s Etsushi Takahashi in his film debut), her own hidden sexuality is awakened. Yoshida, who trained at Shochiku under Nagisa Oshima (CREUL STORY OF YOUTH, IN THE REALM OF THE SENSES), incorporates Bergmanesque touches with a Nouvelle Vague sensibility and more than a hint of Teshigahara (WOMAN IN THE DUNES) in this strikingly visual, highly stylized tale, including sweeping, dreamlike flashbacks, gorgeous long shots, and a haunting theme of duality evident in his use of mirrors and windows, light and dark. “Mad, Bad . . . & Dangerous to Know” concludes on April 18 with Yoshida’s WOMAN OF THE LAKE (ONNA NO MIZUUMI) and Yasuzo Masumura’s highly charged TWO WIVES (TSUMA FUTARI), which has never before been screened outside of Japan.
