Documentary looks at battle between prolife center and abortion clinic on a Florida street corner
12th & DELAWARE (Heidi Ewing & Rachel Grady, 2010)
Maysles Cinema
343 Malcolm X Blvd. between 127th & 128th Sts.
Monday, March 7, $10, 7:00
212-582-6050
www.mayslesinstitute.org
www.hbo.com/documentaries
Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady, who have teamed up for such documentaries as The Boys of Baraka (2005), the Oscar-nominated Jesus Camp (2006), and one segment of Freakonomics (2010), spent a year on the rather indistinct corner of 12th St. & Delaware Ave. in the small community of Fort Pierce, Florida, where an intense battle is waging. On one side of the street sits an abortion clinic, while on the other side is the prolife Pregnancy Care Center. Ewing and Grady are able to get the primarily young, poor pregnant women considering abortion to open up and share their stories as they face one of the most difficult decisions anybody will ever have to make. The women are met by a constant handful of protesters outside the abortion clinic, who try to get them to change their mind and go across the street. Several of the women go to the Pregnancy Care Center by accident, believing it to be the abortion clinic — which is precisely why the center set up shop there — where they are not told of their mistake and are offered money and clothing to not go through with the termination of their pregnancies. They become pawns in a religious and moral battle that Ewing and Grady show can be as infuriating as it is heartbreaking, although the filmmakers do an excellent job of remaining neutral, not casting judgment. Interestingly, while the workers at the prolife center have a lot to say on the issue, the people at the abortion clinic are far more cautious and reserved, with the owner-doctor never being seen on camera but only pulling up in his car (perhaps at least partly for safety reasons, as Kansas abortion doctor George Tiller was murdered during the time the film was being made). This special screening of 12th & Delaware, which will be followed by a Q&A with one of the filmmakers, is part of the Maysles Institute’s monthly Doc Watchers Presents series, curated by Hellura Lyle.
Winner of last year’s Palme d’Or at Cannes, Thai writer-director Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives is an elegiac meditation on memory, transformation, death, and rebirth, a fascinating integration of the human, animal, and spirit worlds. Uncle Boonmee (Thanapat Saisaymar) is dying of kidney failure, being tended to by his Laotian helper, Jaai (Samud Kugasang). Boonmee is joined by his dead wife’s sister, Jen (Jenjira Pongpas), in his house in the middle of the jungle. Boonmee and Jen have nearly impossibly slow conversations that seem to go nowhere, just a couple of very simple people not expecting much excitement out of what’s left of their lives. Even when Boonmee’s long-dead wife, Huay (Natthakarn Aphaiwonk), and his long-missing son, Boonsong (Geerasak Kulhong), now a hairy ghost monkey covered in black fur and with two laserlike red eyes, suddenly show up, Boonmee and Jen pretty much just go with the flow. Weerasethakul maintains the beautifully evocative pace whether Jaai is draining Boonmee’s kidney, the characters discuss Communism, Tong (Sakda Kaewbuadee) questions his monkhood, a princess (Wallapa Mongkolprasert) has sex with a catfish, or they all journey to a cave in search of another of Boonmee’s past lives. The film, which was shot in 16mm and was inspired by a 1983 book called A Man Who Can Recall His Past Lives, is part of the Primitive Project, Weerasethakul’s multimedia installation that also includes the short films A Letter to Uncle Boonmee and Phantoms of Nabua. Weerasethakul, who gained a growing international reputation with such previous works as Blissfully Yours (2002), Tropical Malady (2004), and Syndrome and a Century (2006) and has a bachelor’s degree in architecture from Khon Kaen University and an MFA in filmmaking from the Art Institute of Chicago, is a master storyteller who continues to challenge viewers with his unique visual language and subtly effective narrative techniques.
In 1980, Catherine Deneuve and Gérard Depardieu teamed up for the first time in Claude Berri’s Je Vous Aime, followed by François Truffaut’s The Last Metro. They appeared in several more films together but not in dual leading roles since François Dupeyron’s A Strange Place to Meet (1988). Fortunately, in the ensuing years, they have been more successful than the characters they play in André Téchiné’s absorbing drama Changing Times. Deneuve, as beautiful as ever in her early sixties, stars as Cécile, a lonely woman feeling way too settled in her role as wife, mother, and radio host. Depardieu is Antoine, a lonely engineer who has been burning a candle for Cécile, his first love, for more than thirty years. When her grown son, Sami (Malik Zidi), comes to visit, he surprises everyone by bringing his girlfriend, Nadia (Lubna Azabal), and her young son, Said (Jabi Elomri). Both Sami and Nadia have other reasons for coming to Tangier: He wants to see his very good friend Bilal (Nadem Rachati), a groundskeeper for a rich family, and she wants to see her twin sister, Aicha (Azabal), a devout Muslim who works in McDonald’s. Meanwhile, Cécile’s husband, the younger Nathan (Gilbert Melki), hangs around the house, goes for long swims, and takes care of Antoine’s smashed nose. Depardieu is unnerving as a creepy stalker, and Deneuve is enchanting as the bored wife; Téchiné (Scene of the Crime, Alice et Martin) treats their awkward relationship with intelligence and subtlety, allowing it to play out in unexpected ways.