this week in film and television

XINGU

The Villas-Bôas brothers find more than they bargained for in Cao Hamburger’s XINGU

XINGU (Cao Hamburger, 2012)
Cinema Village
22 East 12th St. between University Pl. & Fifth Ave.
Opens Friday, March 14
212-924-3363
www.cinemavillage.com

In 1943, brothers Orlando (Felipe Camargo), Cláudio (João Miguel), and Leonardo Villas-Bôas (Caio Blat) posed as uneducated peasants known as peons in order to get extremely low-paying jobs working on an expedition into the untamed lands of Central Brazil along the Xingu River. They were looking for excitement and adventure, and over the course of twenty years they ended up finding more than they ever could have imagined. Their story is told in Cao Hamburger’s (The Year My Parents Went on Vacation) award-winning festival favorite Xingu, which follows the three twentysomethings as they make first contact with the indigenous peoples of these regions, tribes that have never seen the white man before. As the close siblings make friends with the men, women, and children in the Xingu villages, the Brazilian government keeps asking for more and more out of the brothers, wanting them to push out the Indians so they can set up airstrips and military bases. Orlando, Cláudio, and Leonardo are suddenly in a difficult position, understanding that they are both “the poison and the antidote,” trying to protect the cultural heritage of these Native Brazilians while their bosses are breaking promise after promise. Produced by Fernando Meirelles (City of God, The Constant Gardener), Xingu is heartfelt if overwrought, both exciting and plodding as the brothers find their place in the world while attempting to help the indigenous Xingu peoples maintain theirs in a changing Brazil. The film explores aspects of colonialism, manifest destiny, deforestation, racism, and discrimination that are still relevant today, in Brazil, the United States, and around the globe. The beautifully shot film also delves into the inherent importance of preserving cultural heritage in the face of technological change and militarism. Xingu can get overly sincere, but it also tells a story that needs to be told.

LE WEEK-END

Nick (Jim Broadbent) and Meg (Lindsay Duncan) reevaluate their relationship while celebrating their thirtieth anniversary in Roger Michell’s LE WEEK-END

LE WEEK-END (Roger Michell, 2013)
Lincoln Plaza Cinema, 1886 Broadway at 63rd St., 212-757-2280
Angelika Film Center, 18 West Houston St. at Mercer St., 212-995-2570
Opens Friday, March 14
www.musicboxfilms.com

Mike Nichols’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? meets Richard Linklater’s “Before” series in Roger Michell’s bittersweet romantic black comedy, Le Week-end. Professor Nick Burrows (Jim Broadbent) and teacher Meg Burrows (Lindsay Duncan) are celebrating their thirtieth wedding anniversary by returning to Paris, where they spent their honeymoon. But whereas their first visit was filled with love, hope, and dreams of a bright future, they have come to the realization that their life together didn’t quite turn out as planned. While Nick still seems to be in love with his wife, Meg is reevaluating their relationship, continually lashing into him and spending what little money they have with reckless abandon. When they unexpectedly bump into an old colleague of Nick’s, the self-absorbed chatterbox Morgan (Jeff Goldblum), they are invited and go to a party where they imagine what could have been, forcing them to face some brutal truths.

Jeff Goldblum is a hoot as a self-absorbed writer in New York Film Festival selection LE WEEK-END

Broadbent (Iris, Topsy-Turvy) and Duncan (Mansfield Park, Traffik) are marvelous together, inhabiting their roles with a beautiful grace, evoking what Jesse (Ethan Hawke) and Céline (Julie Delpy) might be like in the third or fourth sequel to Before Sunrise. Meanwhile, it’s hard to imagine anyone but Goldblum (The Fly, The Big Chill) playing the jittery Morgan so wonderfully. Director Michell and writer Hanif Kureishi, who previously collaborated on The Buddha of Suburbia, The Mother, and Venus, have created a very funny, honest, mature, and heart-wrenching portrait of a couple in sudden crisis after three decades of marriage, not necessarily knowing what, if anything, went wrong when. Le Week-end, which pays tribute to Jean-Luc Godard both in its title and in a late scene, opens March 14 at Lincoln Plaza and the Angelika.

LATE-NIGHT FAVORITES: RESERVOIR DOGS

Ragtag group of gangsters aren’t sure who to trust in Quentin Tarantino’s violent debut, RESERVOIR DOGS

RESERVOIR DOGS (Quentin Tarantino, 1992)
IFC Center
323 Sixth Ave. at West Third St.
Friday, March 14, and Saturday, March 15, 12 midnight
212-924-7771
www.ifccenter.com

Why does Steve Buscemi have to be Mr. Pink? Because Quentin Tarantino said so. Former video-store clerk Tarantino burst onto the indie film scene with the ultraviolent genre picture Reservoir Dogs, about a diamond heist gone horribly wrong, with big nods to Stanley Kubrick’s The Killing, Joseph Sargent’s The Taking of Pelham One Two Three, and other American noirs. You know there’s a problem if Mr. White (Harvey Keitel) has to be called in to clean up the mess made by Mr. Blonde (Michael Madsen), Mr. Blue (Eddie Bunker), Mr. Brown (Tarantino), Mr. Orange (Tim Roth), and, of course, Mr. Pink, all of whom are dressed in ultra-cool black-and-white suits, which makes all the red look that much richer. The robbery was organized by Joe (Lawrence Tierney) and his son, Nice Guy Eddie (Chris Penn), who has some pretty serious issues of his own. Double crosses, Madonna discussions, and a torture scene set to the Stealers Wheel song “Stuck in the Middle with You” make things go from funny to frightening in hysterical blasts of bloody irony as tensions mount and the criminals debate whether they were set up. Reservoir Dogs served as quite a debut for writer-director Tarantino, instantly making him an indie-film hero and sending him on his way, to be followed by his great script for True Romance and his Palme d’Or winner, Pulp Fiction, pulling off quite a triple play in three awesome years to start a career. Reservoir Dogs is screening at midnight on March 14 & 15 as part of the IFC Center’s “Late-Night Favorites” series, which continues with David Lynch’s Eraserhead March 21-22 and Kubrick’s The Shining March 28-29.

EXPOSED

Bambi the Mermaid gets emotional in Beth B’s intimate and revealing documentary

EXPOSED (Beth B, 2013)
IFC Center
323 Sixth Ave. at West Third St.
Thursday, March 6, 7:45, and Monday, March 10, 12:45
Series runs March 5-13
212-924-7771
www.ifccenter.com
www.exposedmovie.com

In Exposed, visual artist Beth B, who got her start in the 1970s underground scene in New York City, invites viewers into the inner world of burlesque, going behind the scenes with eight current performers who share intimate details about their lives and their shows. Beth B (Two Small Bodies, An Unlikely Terrorist), who wrote, directed, produced, edited (with Keith Reamer), and photographed (with Dan Karlok) the seventy-six-minute documentary, goes backstage at such New York venues as the Slipper Room, Le Poisson Rouge, the Cutting Room, Dixon Place, P.S. 122, Galapagos Art Space, and Coney Island’s Sideshows by the Seashore as burlesque performers discuss issues of gender, control, freedom, disabilities, power, nudity, femininity, personal and professional identity, and more. “What the world projects as normal, it’s just such an illusion, it’s such a fantasy,” Bunny Love says, “and I love that fantasy.” UK comedian and cabaret performer Mat Fraser, who was born with “flippers” for hands, explains, “If you can make them laugh and make a political point that fuels your outrage, all the better.” And Rose Wood adds, “I’ve tried to present my audience with an indelible picture of the body seen in another way, seen in a way that’s different than they see themselves. They have ideas of what’s normal — what a man does, what a woman does, what a heterosexual does, what a gay person does — and I try to present them with another way of seeing the body.” Among the other performers who share their stories are Tigger!, who uses burlesque as a kind of sexual political theater; Dirty Martini, who pays tribute to such early stars of the wordless art form as Dixie Evans and Vickie Lynn; Bambi the Mermaid, who produces Coney Island’s popular Burlesque at the Beach series; Julie Atlas Muz, who honors Pina Bausch in her performance art; and World Famous *BOB*, who points out, “I never lie to people. People would say, ‘Are you a man or a woman?’ And I would say yes. That quick wit was something that I learned from my drag family, that quick wit, that ability to turn anything that hurts you inside into something that’s funny.”

World Famous *BOB* takes on the Patriot Act and freedom in EXPOSED

But whereas previous documentaries about burlesque, like Leslie Zemeckis’s Behind the Burly Q, examine its history, Exposed delves into the very personal, individual stories that drive these performers’ desire to take the stage and reveal themselves. While some are clearly proud of who they are and what they do, others appear to still be working out deeply felt, raw and painful emotions and memories. The eight subjects hold nothing back in the film as they bare body and soul; many of the performances are extremely graphic, but it is often as freeing to watch the acts onstage as it appears to be for the performers to perform them. Exposed is running March 14-20 nightly at 9:30 at the IFC Center, with a sold-out sneak preview on March 13. Each screening will be accompanied by a live performance by at least one of the cast members, with World Famous *BOB* on March 14, Dirty Martini on March 15 & 17, Bunny Love and Tigger! on March 16, Mat Fraser and Julie Atlas Muz on March 18, and special guests TBA on March 19-20. (In addition, Fraser and Muz are starring in their own unique version of Beauty and the Beast at the Abrons Arts Center through March 30.)

VIENNA UNVEILED — A CITY IN CINEMA: THE THIRD MAN

Orson Welles makes one of the greatest entrances in film history in THE THIRD MAN

THE THIRD MAN (Carol Reed, 1949)
MoMA Film, Museum of Modern Art
11 West 53rd St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
Friday, March 14, 7:00, and Monday, March 17, 8:00
Series continues through April 20
Tickets: $12, in person only, may be applied to museum admission within thirty days, same-day screenings free with museum admission, available at Film and Media Desk beginning at 9:30 am
212-708-9400
www.moma.org

Carol Reed’s thriller is quite simply the most entertaining film you’re ever likely to see. Set in a divided post-WWII Vienna amid a thriving black market, The Third Man is heavy in atmosphere, untrustworthy characters, and sly humor, with a marvelous zither score by Anton Karas. Joseph Cotten stars as Holly Martins, an American writer of Western paperbacks who has come to Vienna to see his old friend Harry Lime (Orson Welles), but he seems to have shown up a little late. While trying to find out what happened to Harry, Martins falls for Harry’s lover, Anna (Alida Valli); is told to get out of town by Major Calloway (Trevor Howard) and Sergeant Paine (Bernard “M” Lee); meets a stream of Harry’s more interesting, mysterious friends, including Baron Kurtz (Ernst Deutsch) and Popescu (Siegfried Breuer); and is talked into giving a lecture to a literary club by old Mr. Crabbin (Wilfrid Hyde-White). Every scene is a finely honed work of art, filled with long shadows, echoing footsteps, dripping water, and unforgettable dialogue about cuckoo clocks and other strangeness. SPOILER: The shot in which Lime is first revealed, standing in a doorway, a cat brushing by his feet, his tongue firmly in cheek as he lets go a miraculous, knowing smile, is one of the greatest single moments in the history of cinema.

The city of Vienna is a character all its own in THE THIRD MAN

The Third Man is screening March 14 & 17 as part of the MoMA series “Vienna Unveiled: A City in Cinema,” being held in conjunction with Carnegie Hall’s Vienna: City of Dreams festival, in celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of the Austrian Film Museum. The series continues through April 20 with such other Viennese-related fare as Nicolas Roeg’s Bad Timing: A Sensual Obsession, Max Ophüls’s Liebelei, and Josef von Sternberg’s Dishonored. “I never knew the old Vienna before the war, with its Strauss music, its glamour and easy charms,” Reed says in the opening narration of The Third Man. “Constantinople suited me better. I really got to know it in the classic period of the black market. We’d run anything if people wanted it enough . . . and had the money to pay.” As much as The Third Man is about friendship, love, trust, betrayal, music, and loyalty, it’s also about Vienna itself.

RICHIE’S ELECTRIC EIGHT — THE BOLD AND THE DARING: SUMMER VACATION 1999

Three boys mourn the loss of a friend in different ways in Shusuke Kaneko’s SUMMER VACATION

GLOBUS FILM SERIES: SUMMER VACATION 1999 (SEN-KYUHYAKU-KYUJU-KYU-NEN NO NATSUYASUMI) (Shusuke Kaneko, 1988)
Japan Society
333 East 47th St. at First Ave.
Thursday, March 13, $12, 7:00
Series runs March 13-29
212-715-1258
www.japansociety.org

The first part of Japan Society’s tribute to Ohio-born writer, critic, scholar, curator, and filmmaker Donald Richie, who died in February 2013 at the age of eighty-eight, consisted of five classic dramas from Japan’s cinematic elite (Akira Kurosawa, Kenji Mizoguchi, Yasujiro Ozu, Mitsuo Yanagimachi, and Hirokazu Kore-eda). “Richie’s Fantastic Five” is now being followed by “Richie’s Electric Eight: The Bold & the Daring,” comprising eight cutting-edge works by emerging filmmakers. The seventeen-day festival begins March 13 with a rare screening of Shusuke Kaneko’s gender-bending Summer Vacation 1999. Based on Moto Hagio’s shōjo manga The Heart of Thomas, the 1988 film takes place in a boarding school in the near future, as three friends, Kazuhiko (Tomoko Otakara), Naoto (Miyuki Nakano), and Norio (Eri Fukatsu), who are spending the summer alone in their all-boys boarding school, try to recover from the suicide of Yu (Eri Miyajima), who jumped off a cliff after being rejected by Kazuhiko. When a new student, Kaoru (Miyajima), shows up, looking and acting just like Yu, the other boys are forced to face their innermost fears and desires.

Gender identity, homoeroticism, and young love are at the heart of manga-based yaoi film

Beautifully shot in a lush, dreamy 1970s-style palette by Kenji Takama, Summer Vacation 1999 is a prime example of the Japanese yaoi, or boys love, subgenre, focusing on homoeroticism among adolescent boys. Kaneko, who had previously made a pair of Nikkatsu Roman Porno films and would go on to direct monster movies featuring Godzilla, Gamera, and Mothra as well as Death Note and its sequel, explores the students’ growing love and attraction for one another in desexualized yet fetishistic ways, especially in a tender scene in which one boy gives mouth-to-mouth CPR to another, while incorporating elements of the Japanese ghost story as Kaoru continues to evoke Yu. Kaneko also twists the Noh and Kabuki tradition of men performing all the roles, as the four characters are played by females. “One watches these young people, so young that a degree of androgyny is expected, and it is as though one is watching adolescence for the first time,” Richie wrote in his 1988 New Japanese Cinema report for Japan Society. “Given the entire nature of the endeavor, it cannot but help to occasionally teeter on the edge of kitsch (the production looks too French, the music is too Faure, the whole idea also has a flavor of outré) but it never falls in, is never sentimental, and manages to increase its beauty (and our wonder) to the very end.” Plus, the hairstyles are worth the price of admission all by themselves. Summer Vacation will be introduced by MoMA film curator emeritus Laurence Kardish and will be followed by a yaoi party with Ideal Orkestra in which guests are encouraged to dress androgynously. (The Globus Film Series tribute to Richie continues with such other eclectic works as Yoshitaro Nomura’s Chase, Kazuhiro Soda’s Campaign, and Shohei Imamura’s Profound Desire of the Gods.)

BACK TO THE ENCHANTMENT UNDER THE SEA DANCE

Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox) has to save himself and his family at the Enchantment Under the Sea dance

BACK TO THE FUTURE (Robert Zemeckis, 1985)
St. Patrick’s Gymnasium
268 Mulberry St.
Saturday, March 22, 7:00, $45
Sunday, March 23, 6:00, $38
www.bbqfilms.com/enchantment

Get that flux capacitor ready and prepare for 1.21 gigawatts of inspired fun at the Back to the Enchantment Under the Sea Dance. On March 22 & 23, BBQ Films, the team that turns movie screenings into interactive participatory events, are this time going back to the crazy days of 1985 — and 1955 — as Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox) tries to save his family’s future without bedding his hot-to-trot mother (Lea Thompson) while attempting to pair him up with his ultra-nerdy father (Crispin Glover) by the time of the Enchantment Under the Sea high school dance. And the only way Marty can accomplish this desperate task is with the help of mad scientist Doc Brown (Christopher Lloyd) and a specially outfitted DeLorean. Each night, the re-created prom will begin an hour before the screening of Robert Zemeckis’s runaway hit, Back to the Future, with appropriate 1950s attire recommended for all attendees. There will be live music from the Tee-Tones (no relation to Chuck Berry), beer from Brooklyn Brewery and wine from Vinos Libres (the first drink is free), a photobooth, a swing dance demonstration, futuristic 3D glasses, giveaways, an event poster, and gourmet popcorn in addition to an after-party with Mr. Nice, DJ sets from a place both wonderful and strange and GHOST COP, and freaky visuals courtesy of CHNNLS. Tickets go fast for all BBQ Films gatherings, so you might have to hit eighty-eight miles an hour to get them in time. A portion of the proceeds will be donated to the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research.