ROMANCE JOE is made up of an interweaving collection of related narratives built around the suicide of a famous actress
GEMS OF KOREAN CINEMA: ROMANCE JOE (RO-MAEN-SEU-JO) (Lee Kwang-kuk, 2011)
Tribeca Cinemas
54 Varick St. at Laight St.
Tuesday, September 11, free, 7:00
212-759-9550
www.koreanculture.org
www.tribecacinemas.com
Following in the footsteps of his mentor, Hong sang-soo, for whom he served as assistant director for five years, Lee Kwang-kuk’s debut film, Romance Joe, is a complex, engaging narrative about the art of storytelling. Made up of interweaving tales that eventually come together in surreal ways, mixing fantasy and reality, Romance Joe begins as an elderly mother and father (Kim Su-ung and Park Hye-jin) arrive in Seoul to surprise their son, a film director, but they are informed by his friend, Seo Dam (Kim Dong-hyeon), that he has disappeared after the suicide of a popular actress and has given up the film business. Soon Dam is telling his friend’s parents his own idea for a screenplay, about a determined young boy (Ryu Ui-hyeon) who runs away from home to find his mother at the only address he has for her, a teahouse brothel, where the owner, Re-ji (Shin Dong-mi), isn’t sure what to do with him. Meanwhile, Lee (Jo Han-cheol), a director with one hit under his belt and now facing writer’s block, has been left at a country inn without his cell phone, forced to finish his next screenplay. He orders coffee that is delivered by the movie-obsessed Re-ji, who tells him the story of Romance Joe (Kim Yeong-pil), a suicidal film director who relates a story of his own from his youth, when he (Lee David) saved a girl he loved, Cho-hee (Lee Chae-eun), after she slit her wrist in a forest. The various narratives — flashbacks, stories within stories, the modern-day framing, and script ideas — slowly merge in fascinating and confusing ways, reminiscent of such Hong films as Oki’s Movie, Like You Know It All, and Tale of Cinema. Although suicide is a major theme running through all of the stories, Romance Joe is not a sad melodrama; instead, it is an entertaining, thoughtful, if overly long exploration of narrative in film. Romance Joe, which was part of this year’s “New Directors, New Films” series at MoMA and Lincoln Center, is screening for free September 11 at Tribeca Cinemas, kicking off the Korean Cultural Service film series “Gems of Korean Cinema,” which focuses on indie works and continues September 25 with Moon Si-hyun’s Home Sweet Home and October 9 with Kim Joong-hyun’s Choked.
If you’ve never seen this remarkable cinematic achievement, prepare to be overwhelmed by Jean Renoir’s antiwar masterpiece. The first foreign film to be nominated for a Best Picture Oscar, Grand Illusion is set in a POW camp during WWI, where everyman pilot Lieutenant Maréchal (Jean Gabin), by-the-book Captain de Boieldieu (Pierre Fresnay), lovable Rosenthal (Marcel Dalio), and others are being held by the aristocratic Captain von Rauffenstein (an unforgettable Erich von Stroheim). Proclaimed “cinematic public enemy no. 1” by Joseph Goebbels, Grand Illusion takes on anti-Semitism, class structure, and religion in addition to war, a humanist film that is as relevant as ever seventy-five years after its initial release. It will be screening on September 10 at Film Forum as part of “The French Old Wave” in a new 35mm restored print (shown earlier this year at Film Forum), made in honor of the film’s seventy-fifth anniversary. The series continues through September 13 with such classics as Jean Cocteau’s Beauty and the Beast and Renoir’s The Rules of the Game in addition to double features of Jean Grémillon’s Lumière d’Eté and Le Ciel Est à Vous, Henri-Georges Clouzot’s L’Assassin Habite au 21 and Quai des Orfèvres, and Grémillon’s Remorques and L’Étrange Monsieur Victor.
Al Pacino burst onto the cinematic landscape in The Panic in Needle Park, his first starring role. Pacino is fabulously unsettling as Bobby, a junkie always looking to score around Sherman Square at 72nd St. and Broadway, known then as Needle Park. Bobby hooks up with Helen (Kitty Winn, who was named Best Actress at the 1971 Cannes Film Festival for her performance), and the two of them do whatever is necessary to stay high as they wander the streets of the city. Director Jerry Schatzberg (Scarecrow, The Seduction of Joe Tynan, Street Smart) uses natural sound and light to give the film a more realistic feel, as if you are walking through the streets with Bobby and Helen. Several scenes will break your heart, including the one on the Staten Island Ferry; the powerful screenplay was the first written by novelist Joan Didion. The film launched Pacino’s stellar film career; his next five movies were The Godfather, Scarecrow, Serpico, The Godfather Part II, and Dog Day Afternoon, arguably the best start to an acting career ever. Gritty, realistic, and surprisingly tender, The Panic in Needle Park will be screening September 9, 13, and 17 as part of Anthology Film Archives’ ongoing series From the Pen of . . ., paying tribute to the often underrecognized writers behind some great films, this time around focusing on screenplays written by novelists, including Donald Westlake (Cops and Robbers, The Stepfather), Elmore Leonard (Joe Kidd, Mr. Majestyk), James Salter (Downhill Racer), Richard Matheson (House of Usher), Truman Capote (The Innocents), and others.
In the mid-1980s, George Romero produced a syndicated horror anthology series called Tales from the Darkside, a creepy, often gory combination of Rod Serling’s Twilight Zone, Steven Spielberg’s Amazing Stories, and, primarily, HBO’s Tales from the Crypt. Actor and screenwriter Henry Oleck’s directorial debut, Serving Up Richard, is like a too long, more graphic Darkside episode, with actors you think you’ve seen before but are not quite sure where, caught up in bizarre situations that might just work until the usually pretty stupid ending ultimately leaves you disappointed. Ross McCall (White Collar) stars as Richard Reubens, a minor Wall Street player who is transferred to Los Angeles, moving to a sunny community with his lovely wife, Karen (Jericho’s Darby Stanchfield). Seeing an ad for an ultracool Mustang, Richard doesn’t listen to his wife and instead goes to check it out — and winds up locked in a cage by a crazy cannibal couple, anthropologist Everett Hutchins (24’s Jude Ciccolella) and his very strange, perpetually ailing wife, Glory (executive producer and former ballerina Susan Priver). While off on one of his many trips, Everett learned that eating healthy humans is good for sick people, so he regularly finds meals for his darling love, the pale-skinned, agoraphobic Glory. But when Glory takes a liking to Richard as a person, the Wall Street hunk thinks he might be able to negotiate his way out of this mess and avoid winding up on the menu. Originally titled The Guest Room, Serving Up Richard starts out as a surprisingly appealing appetizer, setting the table with some tasty tidbits. The main course keeps things looking up for a while, but as it goes on and on, it grows cold and silly, throwing in some very bad jokes and ridiculously over-the-top scenes. And the dessert — well, like the most mediocre Tales from the Darkside episode (was there any other kind?), the finale is a major letdown. However, McCall hangs tough through it all, doing a good job of holding the audience’s interest as the plot goes off the deep end. (Add half a star if you thought Tales from the Darkside was anything but mediocre.)