this week in film and television

CERTAIN WOMEN: THE HEADLESS WOMAN / THE FUTURE

A wealthy woman (María Onetto) looks the other way after she might have run over someone in THE HEADLESS WOMAN

THE HEADLESS WOMAN (LA MUJER SIN CABEZA) (Lucrecia Martel, 2008)
Metrograph
7 Ludlow St. between Canal & Hester Sts.
Saturday, January 21, 2:00 & 9:00
212-660-0312
metrograph.com
www.miumiu.com

Since 2011, Prada’s Miu Miu brand of women’s clothing and accessories, named for founder Miuccia Prada, has been sponsoring “Women’s Tales,” fashion-themed short films by such female directors as Ava DuVernay (Selma), Agnès Varda (Vagabond), Zoe R. Cassavetes (Day Out of Days), Alice Rohrwacher (The Wonders), and Crystal Moselle (The Wolfpack). The Metrograph series “Certain Women” pairs six of the commissioned works with a feature film made by the director (indicated in parenthesis above). The brief series concludes this week with Lucrecia Martel and Miranda July. Inspired by nightmares she has in which she commits murder, Martel’s The Headless Woman details a woman’s emotional and psychological reaction after having possibly killed someone. María Onetto gives a mesmerizingly cool, distant performance as Veronica, a middle-aged, upper-class wife and mother whose biggest worry appears to be the turtles that have infested the new pool built behind a veterinary office. But one afternoon, while out driving carelessly in her Mercedes along a twisting, barren road, she hits something. Not sure if it was a child, an adult, or an animal, she decides to continue on, telling no one what she has done. But when a poor, local boy goes missing, she begins to suspect that she might have killed him. An intriguing mix of Luis Buñuel’s class-consciousness and Edgar Allan Poe’s flair for suspense, The Headless Woman is an unusual kind of murder mystery. In Veronica, Argentine writer-director Martel (La Cienaga, The Holy Girl) has created a compelling protagonist/villain, played with expert calm and faraway eyes by Onetto. The Headless Woman is screening at Metrograph on January 21 at 2:00 and 9:00, preceded by Martel’s 2011 seven-minute Miu Miu short, the highly stylized, dialogue-free Muta.

Hamish Linklater and Miranday July contemplate their future

Hamish Linklater and Miranda July contemplate their future in THE FUTURE

THE FUTURE (Miranda July, 2011)
Metrograph
7 Ludlow St. between Canal & Hester Sts.
Sunday, January 22, 2:00
212-660-0312
metrograph.com
www.thefuturethefuture.com

Multimedia performance artist and indie darling Miranda July scored a major breakthrough with her 2005 cinematic debut, the utterly charming romantic comedy Me and You and Everyone We Know. While her follow-up, The Future, lacks many of the endearing qualities that made her first film such a success, it is still a quirky, beguiling drama that offers a bittersweet breath of fresh air. July stars as Sophie, a children’s dance teacher living with Jason (Hamish Linklater), a work-at-home IT dude. The slackers spend their time sitting on the couch, both on their laptops, having offbeat conversations and pretending they can stop time. But when they are told that the sick cat they want to adopt won’t be well enough to leave the veterinary hospital for another month, they decide that this will be their last thirty days of freedom, thinking that the arrival of the feline will confer upon them the responsibilities of adulthood they have been so good at avoiding up to now. Given this last bastion of hope, they quit their jobs to pursue their dreams: Jason starts going door-to-door selling trees, while Sophie sets out to perform a dance a day and post them on YouTube. No, this oddball, somewhat freakish couple doesn’t exactly dream big. And, of course, their idea of freedom doesn’t turn out to be exactly what they had hoped.

Miranda July’s Miu Miu short, SOMEBODY, will screen with THE FUTURE at Metrograph on January 22

The Future veers off in way too many directions, some good, some bad, but it is held together by July’s bright eyes and lanky, comedic body even as she explores the horrors of mainstream suburban living. As with much of her performance art, she challenges the audience to stay with her as she defies standard narrative conventions and turns to the surreal, including a talking moon. The film is nearly stolen by Joe Putterlik, an elderly man whom Jason meets through a Pennysaver ad for a three-dollar used hair dryer; Putterlik, who also is the voice of the moon, was actually discovered by July through a Pennysaver ad, and much of his dialogue is improvised and set in his own apartment as he talks about his real life. Sadly, he died immediately after shooting was concluded. The film is narrated by the ill cat, Paw Paw (voiced by July in a creepy monotone), who dreams of her own freedom, wanting desperately to get out of her cage and be taken in by people who will love her. And after all, isn’t that what we all want? The Future is screening at Metrograph on January 22 at 2:00, preceded by July’s 2014 ten-minute Miu Miu short, Somebody, about a messaging app in which strangers participate in people’s personal situations.

THE END IS THE BEGINNING: PAN’S LABYRINTH

Guillermo de Toro creates a mystical fairy-tale world in PAN’S LABYRINTH

NITEHAWK BRUNCH SCREENINGS: PAN’S LABYRINTH (EL LABERINTO DEL FAUNO) (Guillermo del Toro, 2006)
Nitehawk Cinema
136 Metropolitan Ave. between Berry St. & Wythe Ave.
Saturday, January 21, and Sunday, January 22, 11:15 am
718-384-3980
www.nitehawkcinema.com
panslabyrinth.co.uk

The closing night film of the 2006 New York Film Festival and an Oscar nominee for Best Foreign Language Film, Guillermo del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth is a breathtaking fairy tale set in 1944 Spain, shortly after the Spanish Civil War. When her mother, Carmen (Ariadna Gil), marries Captain Vidal (Sergi Lopez), young Ofelia (Ivana Baquero) must move to the middle of the woods, where Vidal and his small group of soldiers are defending the last vestiges of Franco’s Fascist regime against a group of resistance fighters seeking peace and freedom for all. Led by a mysterious flying creature, the adventurous Ofelia makes her way through an ancient underground labyrinth, where she meets the Faun (Hellboy’s Doug Jones), who tells her that she just might be the reborn, long-missing princess they’ve been waiting centuries for — but first she’ll have to perform three tasks to prove that she has returned to claim her throne. As Vidal shows more concern for the baby that Carmen is carrying than for Carmen herself — and also brutally tortures and kills anyone who gets in his way, whether it is one of the revolutionaries or one of his own people — Ofelia meets a dangerous yet engaging series of beings as she hopes for her fairy-tale dreams to come true and erase the nightmares of the real world. In Pan’s Labyrinth, del Toro (Cronos, The Devil’s Backbone) has cleverly balanced fantasy and reality, alternating between scenes of horror and graphic violence aboveground and below as seen through the eyes of a brave young girl trapped in both. Nominated for six Academy Awards and winner of three (for Best Art Direction, Best Cinematography, and Best Makeup), Pan’s Labyrinth is being shown January 21 and 22 at 11:15 am in the Nitehawk Cinema series “Nitehawk Brunch Screenings” and “The End Is the Beginning,” the latter consisting of movies in which the ending is told at the beginning. Inspired by Billy Wilder’s Sunset Boulevard, the series, which also featured Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction, concludes January 28 and 29 with Sam Mendes’s Oscar-winning American Beauty.

CABARET CINEMA — PERCEPTION: VERTIGO

James Stewart and Kim Novak get caught up in a murder mystery in VERTIGO

VERTIGO (Alfred Hitchcock, 1958)
Rubin Museum of Art
150 West 17th St. at Seventh Ave.
Friday, January 20, $10, 9:30
Series continues Friday nights through April 28
212-620-5000
rubinmuseum.org

The Rubin Museum Cabaret Cinema series “Perception” continues January 20 with Alfred Hitchcock’s 1958 mind-altering, fetishistic psychological thriller, Vertigo. Based on Boileau-Narcejac’s 1954 novel, D’entre les morts, the film delves deep into the nature of fear and obsession. Jimmy Stewart stars as John “Scottie” Ferguson, a police detective who retires after his acrophobia leads to the death of a fellow cop. An old college classmate, wealthy businessman Gavin Elster (Tom Holmore), asks Scottie to look into his wife’s odd behavior; Elster believes that Madeleine (Kim Novak) is being inhabited by the spirit of Carlotta Valdes, her great-grandmother, a woman who committed suicide in her mid-twenties, the same age that Madeleine is now. Scottie follows Madeleine as she goes to Carlotta’s grave, visits a portrait of her in a local museum, and jumps into San Francisco Bay. Scottie rescues her, brings her to his house, and starts falling in love with her. But on a visit to Mission San Juan Bautista, tragedy strikes when Scottie can’t get to the top of the tower because of his vertigo. After a stint in a sanatorium, he wanders the streets of San Francisco where he and Madeleine had fallen in love, as if hoping to see a ghost — and when he indeed finds a woman who reminds him of Madeleine, a young woman named Judy Barton (Novak), he can’t help but try to turn her into his lost love, with tragedy waiting in the wings once again.

Scottie experiences quite a nightmare in Alfred Hitchcock classic

Vertigo is a twisted tale of sexual obsession, much of it filmed in San Francisco, making the City by the Bay a character all its own as Scottie travels down Lombard St., takes Madeleine to Muir Woods, stops by Ernie’s, and saves Madeleine under the Golden Gate Bridge. The color scheme is almost shocking, with bright, bold blues, reds, and especially greens dominating scenes. Hitchcock, of course, famously had a thing for blondes, so it’s hard not to think of Stewart as his surrogate when Scottie insists that Judy dye her hair blonde. Color is also central to Scottie’s psychedelic nightmare (designed by artist John Ferren), a Spirographic journey through his mind and down into a grave. Cinematographer Robert Burks’s use of the dolly zoom, in which the camera moves on a dolly in the opposite direction of the zoom, keeps viewers sitting on the edge of their seats, adding to the fierce tension, along with Bernard Herrmann’s frightening score. Despite their age difference, there is pure magic between Stewart, forty-nine, and Novak, twenty-four. (Stewart and Novak next made Bell, Book, and Candle as part of the deal to let Novak work for Paramount while under contract to Columbia.) The production was fraught with problems: The screenplay went through Maxwell Anderson, Alec Coppel, and finally Samuel A. Taylor; shooting was delayed by Hitchcock’s health and vacations taken by Stewart and Novak; a pregnant Vera Miles was replaced by Novak; Muir Matheson conducted the score in Europe, instead of Herrmann in Hollywood, because of a musicians’ strike; associate producer Herbert Coleman reshot one scene using the wrong lens; Hitchcock had to have a bell tower built atop Mission San Juan Bautista after a fire destroyed its steeple; and the studio fought for a lame alternate ending (which was filmed). Perhaps all those difficulties, in the end, helped make Vertigo the classic it is today, gaining in stature over the decades, from mixed reviews when it opened to a controversial restoration in 1996 to being named the best film of all time in Sight & Sound’s 2012 poll to a recent digital restoration.

Vertigo is screening January 20 at 9:30 at the Rubin as part of “Perception,” which asks the questions “Can the truth truly be trusted? Is it objective or rather tinted by our experience and memories?” The series, part of the museum’s always innovative Brainwave programming, continues through April 28 with such other mind-bending films as Spike Jonze’s Her, Michel Gondry’s Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and the Wachowskis’ The Matrix, with all shows introduced by a scientific expert. Brainwave, meanwhile, features such talks as David Nichtern, Ethan Nichtern, and Samantha Boardman discussing “Can there be such a thing as mindful politics?” on February 1, Walter Murch and Heather Berlin answering the question “How is movie magic made?” on February 4, and Khentrul Thokmeth Rinpoche and Gaëlle Desbordes wondering, “Can meditation change the world?” on March 12.

NEW YORK JEWISH FILM FESTIVAL — WILLIAM KENTRIDGE: TRIUMPHS AND LAMENTS

Documentary follows ambitious William Kentridge project along Tiber River in Rome

WILLIAM KENTRIDGE: TRIUMPHS AND LAMENTS (Giovanni Troilo, 2016)
Film Society of Lincoln Center, Walter Reade Theater
165 West 65th St. at Amsterdam Ave.
Tuesday, January 17, 6:00, and Thursday, January 19, 4:15
New York Jewish Film Festival runs January 11-24
212-875-5601
www.nyjff.org
www.filmlinc.org

South African multimedia artist William Kentridge has made animated short films, designed and directed operas, performed one-man shows, delivered the Norton Lecture at Harvard, and exhibited works (including drawing, video, sculpture, and installation) around the world. Italian director and photographer Giovanni Troilo documents one of Kentridge’s grandest, most ambitious projects in William Kentridge: Triumphs and Laments, having its world premiere at the New York Jewish Film Festival this week. For more than a dozen years, Kentridge and site-specific artist and curator Kristin Jones were involved in planning “Triumphs and Laments: A Project for Rome,” a mural and live procession along a more-than-five-hundred-yard stretch of the Tiber River celebrating the history of the Eternal City. But Kentridge adds his own subtle sociopolitical twist, as he has done throughout his career with such works as his series of films about Soho Eckstein and Felix Teitlebaum. “The glories of imperial Rome were only possible through unbelievable and unbearable acts of cruelty, enacted on a massive scale,” he explains in the documentary, noting that he will link such disparate characters as Romulus and Remus with Pier Paolo Pasolini among the ninety figures. “Every colonial empire is there only through enormous acts of violence. The great things that were built, they’re always on the back of other people.” Part of Tevereterno, “a multidisciplinary cultural project for the revival of Rome’s Tiber River,” founded by artistic director Jones in 2001, “Triumphs and Laments” becomes enmeshed in a labyrinth of bureaucracy as an ever-more-emotional Jones fights for permits amid an ever-changing local government while Kentridge battles to get every detail just right, from the large-scale stencil drawings to the pacing of the procession. Wearing his trademark black pants and white button-down shirt, Kentridge is shown driving around his hometown of Johannesburg, describing his process in his studio, taking a boat ride along the Tiber, listening to longtime collaborator Philip Miller’s orchestration, and continually worrying about the potential realization of the project, up to the very last minute. At one point Jones and Kentridge bump into the mayor, who is riding his bike in the area; the chance meeting seems serendipitous until scandal forces the municipal head from office.

A fascinating theorist with an unpredictable sense of humor, Kentridge explains that his main goal is to “try to find the triumph in the lament and the lament in the triumph,” saying that “it only works if it’s possible to have an irreverence for the history.” Troilo also speaks with Miller, co-composer Thuthuka Sibisi, and others who offer their thoughts about working with Kentridge and the specifics of the project, one that will be temporary, since the procession is a one-time-only event and the stencils will eventually fade away, much like parts of Roman history. Kentridge, who was the subject of a major retrospective, “Five Themes,” at MoMA in 2010, is always a joy to watch, and that is as true as ever here in Rome, as he conducts another unique and unusual work as only he can. William Kentridge: Triumphs and Laments is screening on January 17 and 19 at the Walter Reade Theater, with producer Andrea Patierno participating in Q&As following each show. The twenty-sixth annual New York Jewish Film Festival, a joint production of the Jewish Museum and the Film Society of Lincoln Center, continues through January 24 with more than three dozen programs, from new fiction and nonfiction films to special tributes to Valeska Gert and the duo of Zero Mostel and Gene Wilder and a master class with Israeli documentarian Tomer Heymann.

PIRANDELLO 150: SIX CHARACTERS IN SEARCH OF AN AUTHOR

Who: Stacy Keach, Norman Lloyd
What: Free screening and Skype Q&A
Where: Film Forum, 209 West Houston St., 212-727-8110
When: Sunday, January 15, free, 1:20
Why: In 1976, actor Stacy Keach directed a modern-day version of Luigi Pirandello’s Six Characters in Search of an Author, set in a television studio. Adapted by soap opera writer Paul Avila Mayer (Ryan’s Hope), the PBS TV movie starred Julie Adams as the Mother, Andy Griffith as the Father, Patricia Hitchcock as the Character Lady, John Houseman as the Director, Beverly Todd as the Stepdaughter, and James Keach as, appropriately enough, the Son. The film is getting a rare public showing on Sunday, January 15, at 1:20, at Film Forum, and admission is free. And as an even more special treat, Stacy Keach (Fat City, Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer) and executive producer Norman Lloyd — yes, that Norman Lloyd, the 102-year-old stage and screen actor, director, and producer who played the villain in Alfred Hitchcock’s Saboteur, starred as Dr. Daniel Auschlander on St. Elsewhere, was the fool in the 1950-51 National Theatre production of King Lear directed by Houseman, was a Cavalcade of America radio regular during WWII, and was most recently seen as Amy Schumer’s father’s hospice friend in Judd Apatow’s Trainwreck — will be taking part in a live Skype Q&A following the screening, which is part of the Film Forum series “Pirandello 150,” a celebration of the 150th birthday of the Nobel Prize-winning dramatist that continues through January 19 with such other rarities as Paolo & Vittorio Taviani’s Kaos and Tu Ridi, Marcel L’Herbier’s The Late Mathias Pascal, Marco Bellocchio’s The Nanny and Henry IV with Marcello Mastroianni, and Alessandro Blasetti’s Liolà.

THE SON OF JOSEPH

Vincent (newcomer Victor Ezenfis) is desperate to put his family back together in Eugène Green’s SON OF JOSEPH

THE SON OF JOSEPH (LE FILS DE JOSEPH) (Eugène Green, 2016)
Film Society of Lincoln Center
Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center, Howard Gilman Theater
144 West 65th St. between Eighth & Amsterdam Aves.
Opens Friday, January 13
212-875-5050
www.filmlinc.org
www.kinolorber.com

Eugène Green returned to the New York Film Festival in 2016 with the glorious French satire / black comedy / biblical parable The Son of Joseph, a masterful blending of sound, image, and story that is as stunning to listen to as it is to watch. Newcomer Victor Ezenfis stars as Vincent, an intractable young teen who is desperate to discover who his father is, no matter how hard his single mother (Natacha Regnier), a nurse, tries to keep that information from him. “I don’t want to help people,” he says. “I love no one.” His sneaky ways finally reveal the man’s name, and Vincent tracks him down only to discover that the man, Oscar Pormenor (Mathieu Amalric), is a boorish, self-obsessed publisher who is cheating on his wife with his sexy secretary, Bernadette (Julia de Gasquet). At a party for his company’s latest book, The Predatory Mother, ever-so-chic critic Violette Tréfouille (Maria de Medeiros) mistakes Vincent for an up-and-coming novelist, with Oscar cluelessly declaring him the next Céline before finding out who the boy really is. Soon a disappointed Vincent is befriended by Oscar’s brother, Joseph (Fabrizio Rongione), but neither is aware of the connection. As Vincent is introduced to art and literature, he attempts to manipulate everyone around him in order to form the family he’s always wanted.

A single mother (Natacha Regnier) has her hands full with son Vincent (Victor Ezenfis) in extraordinary biblical parable

Green, an American expatriate living and working in France — and who appears in the film as the grizzled hotel concierge — divides The Son of Joseph into five chapters named for major biblical events, including “The Sacrifice of Abraham,” “The Golden Calf,” and “The Flight to Egypt.” Vincent is mesmerized by a poster in his room of Caravaggio’s “The Sacrifice of Isaac”; at the Louvre, Joseph shows him religious paintings such as Philippe de Champaigne’s “The Dead Christ” and Georges de la Tour’s “Joseph the Carpenter.” Ever the absurdist, Green (Toutes les nuits, Le monde vivant) turns to the surreal for the finale, which features a revelation that elicited an audible gasp of wonder from the audience when I saw it, an exhalation in which I heartily participated. As in 2014’s architectural wonder La Sapienza, which also starred Rongione, each frame is composed like a work of art, courtesy of longtime Green cinematographer Raphaël O’Byrne, along with editor Valérie Loiseleux, set designer Paul Rouschop, and costume designer Agnès Noden. The entrancing color schemes and long two-shots in addition to spectacular sound by Benoît De Clerck immerse you in Green’s unique and unusual fantasy world.

The actors, who speak in Green’s trademark overly mannered and stiff style, occasionally look directly into the camera, speaking lines to the viewer, but The Son of Joseph, coproduced by Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, never gets preachy. It’s a bizarrely entertaining tale of family, of fathers and sons, and mothers and sons, where all the details matter. Inside a church, Vincent witnesses musical ensemble Le Poème Harmonique perform a work in Latin by Domenico Mazzocchi about a mother dealing with the death of her son. Earlier, when Vincent turns down a friend’s offer to join his sperm-selling operation, it’s not merely because he might find the job distasteful; deep down, he doesn’t want any other kid to go through life not knowing who his father is. He might say, “I don’t want to help people. I love no one.” But he proves himself wrong in this stunner.

VINCE GIORDANO: THERE’S A FUTURE IN THE PAST

Vince Giordano will be at Cinema Village for QAs this weekend after 7:00 9:00 screenings of new doc

Vince Giordano will be at Cinema Village for Q&As this weekend after 7:00 and 9:00 screenings of new doc

VINCE GIORDANO: THERE’S A FUTURE IN THE PAST (Dave Davidson & Amber Edwards, 2016)
Cinema Village
22 East 12th St. between University Pl. & Fifth Ave.
Opens Friday, January 13
212-529-6799
www.cinemavillage.com
www.firstrunfeatures.com

Nearly twelve years ago, I met with bandleader, musician, archivist, and historian Vince Giordano for a profile I was writing for the now-defunct New York Sun. “It’s really sad to say, but America has been a culture of, ‘If it’s old, it’s no good anymore.’ And I think that’s unfortunate,” the Brooklyn-born Giordano carefully explained. “A lot of stuff just gets swept aside. For many, many years, I was kind of the lone wolf out there, just plugging with this music. It’s a shame. Classic things don’t get outdated or old; they’re still great.” Giordano’s celebration of and dedication to the classic Jazz Age music of the 1920s and 1930s is on full display in Dave Davidson and Amber Edwards’s documentary, Vince Giordano: There’s a Future in the Past, which opens January 13 at Cinema Village. The film follows Giordano and his band, the Nighthawks, as they play live concerts and perform music for major Hollywood films. Giordano also shows off his vast collection of more than sixty thousand musical arrangements. Giordano, Davidson, and Edwards will be at Cinema Village for Q&As following the 7:00 and 9:00 screenings January 13, 14, and 15; in addition, Davidson will be joined by sound designer Paul Kozel for Q&As January 13 at 3:00 and January 18 at 7:00. You can also catch Vince Giordano and the Nighthawks every Monday and Tuesday night at 8:00 doing their swing thing at Iguana NYC on West Fifty-Fourth St. Keep watching this space for a full review of the documentary.