Week of December 2 to December 8 (Mann)

What’s on at the Tropic
by Phil Mann

It’s always a treat when a new Pedro Almadóvar film comes out. Early in his career, the titles alone were enough to get your juices flowing: Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (1988), Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! (1990). The Key West Film Society/Tropic Cinema has presented every Almadóvar opus released since the Society’s founding in 1999. They had a great time presenting All About My Mother at a gala fund raiser at the San Carlos, inviting Monroe County’s legendary “Queen Mother,” County Commisioner Wilhelmina Harvey, as a guest of honor. Believe me, the octogenarian Harvey didn’t expect a movie about a transvestite father and a pregnant nun.

Almadóvar’s more recent titles have pulled back a little, but the subject matter is always off-beat and provocative . His new film THE SKIN I LIVE IN continues the tradition. The New York Times’ Manhola Dargis can’t decide if it’s “an existential mystery, a melodramatic thriller, a medical horror film or just a polymorphous extravaganza.”

A quick summary, without giving away the plot twists which keep you guessing. Dr. Robert Ledgard (Antonio Banderas) is a brilliant plastic surgeon who has become more a mad scientist, as he tries to develop a new technique for saving burn victims by experimenting on a human subject. The woman, named Vera Cruz (Elena Anaya), is beautiful and, by turns, dutiful and belligerent. “Part Vertigo, part Beauty and the Beast, part Bride of Frankenstein, Pedro Almodóvar’s The Skin I Live In is yet another casually masterful work, from a director who has barely put a foot wrong in his 30 (!) years of feature filmmaking.” (Shawn Levy, Portland Oregonian)

Also opening this week is MELANCHOLIA. the latest from the notorious filmmaker Lars Von Trier (Breaking the Waves, Dancer in the Dark, Antichrist). Justine (Kirsten Dunst) is an oddly affectless, anhedonic woman who is getting married on the day that a rogue planet (named Melancholia) is threatening to crash into the earth. Her sister Claire (Charlotte Gainsbourg), who has paid for the lavish wedding, tries to break the spell (and maybe save the Earth?).

Dunst won the Best Actress Award at Cannes, while Von Trier was drummed out of town for making obnoxious remarks. So it goes in the world of film festivals. He later apologized. But this side story has nothing to do with the movie which is beautifully filmed. Rene Rodriquez in the Miami Herald describes it well as “an intergalactic sci-fi metaphor for a psychological disorder…. a tremendously daring movie.”

The Europan opera season continues this week, with DON GIOVANNI live from La Scala in Milan. It’s the festive opening night of the Milanese opera season, with Daniel Barenboim conducting and the gorgeous Anna Netrebko as Donna Anna.  You can be there for the live show Wednesday at 12:00PM EST (6:00PM in Milan). There’s also an encore broadcast in the evening.

Held over are MARY MARCY MAY MARLENE, J. EDGAR, and RUM DIARY, as the Tropic’s winter movie season move into high gear and we begin the run up to Christmas.  Time to consider Tropic Gift Cards for your loved ones – ten percent discount on all cards for members. Or check out the Elves link on the Tropic’s home page. Are you naughty or nice?

Full schedules and info at TropicCinema.com or TCKW.info.

The Skin I Live In (Brockway)

Tropic Sprockets by Ian Brockway

The Skin I Live in

The first time I came across a Pedro Almodovar film, I was a student at the University of Miami. Almodovar was known by both of  his first and last names then, and the director seemed less of a person and more like a provocative creature, perhaps an emotion, a color, or a cinematic perfume.  

I had no idea. I went into the university cinema to see "Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!" (1990) because I had a crush on a girlfriend who invited me, but it wasn't a "date". There was a raffle prize of a pair of handcuffs. Real ones. As it turned out, I won. 

The handcuffs of hard and shiny metal were as strange and curious to me as Almodovar. I knew both involved sex but what was I going to do with a pair of handcuffs and what could I gain in watching the film? The only thing I thought about the title was that it probably involved sex and hopefully a nude scene. I remember lots of bright color, fast cutting, and some feelings of apprehension. I thought of Hitchcock and the romantic sexual cravings within my own body, but I don't remember much else. 

Now decades later, a calmer version of myself has rolled in to see "The Skin I Live In", the latest film by Almodovar, but as I looked at my body, I noticed that I was still leaning a bit forwards and sideways, my right hand clenched in excitement, much the way it was in the early 90s, but I still didn't know what to expect.

Simply put, "The Skin I Live In" is a rich, Gothic feast for the eyes, fast-paced and strange, with no uneven lulls at any point. Loyal devotees of Almodovar's films will find the same lush scenery and the director's trademark use of brilliant  color that never fails to make parrots fly away in envy. All the traditional cues are here but the story is laced in black right out of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein or Poe.

Antonio Banderas stars as Dr. Ledgard, an ultra-controlling  plastic surgeon who has been grieving over the death of his wife who was horribly burned. Ledgard lives in a opulent mansion. Each day he goes to his lab and works on a project to produce "artificial skin", from a kind of adhesive nectar, as far as I can tell, made from bees and human growth cells. In one of the rooms Ledgard keeps a live-in patient, Vera, (Elena Anaya) a very attractive feline ingenue who looks strikingly like Simone Simon. She gets more beautiful as the movie goes on on, but the cat's got my tongue.

Vera, in a flesh-toned body suit is kept in confinement, doing yoga and studying the sculpture of Louise Bourgeois, whose work, with its tightly meshed and life sized sewn figures, speaks to both Vera and Dr. Ledgard.

Vera is almost always seen from the back. Almadovar's almost fetishistic reverence of Vera's vertebrae, her buttery skin and the violin curve of her hips is on par with Salvador Dali's portraits of Gala. It hardly seems coincidental that Ledgard's new skin process is actually called "Gal" after the doctor's deceased wife. But with all of the film's cold whiteness that ultimately dominates the tell-tale lushness of elegant surrealism, the artist that Almodovar seems to be echoing the most is David Cronenberg. 

But he does  Cronenberg one  better. There is a black heart here, but  it tilts and surprises with the narrative almost going full speed ahead into a subversive sun, yet this cat and mouse game with a sexual double cross never quits.
This is  an Almodovar melodrama with enough twists and turns to invert a Cronenberg story of dread into a Toledo carnival. Just the sight of Elena Anaya is enough to make anyone's heart melt, be they male, female or transgendered. When the camera moves over her body it is like watching the production of white chocolate in its most liquid form. Vera's skin is as infinite and as blankly voluptuous as a Dalinian beach---bright and visually aromatic.

"The Skin I Live In" is a taut suspenseful Grand Guignol yarn that will delight the eye as well as race the heart. An Almodovar film is like seeing an acquaintance  who is up to his usual obsessions, but who still remains exotic, mysterious and thrillingly unreachable.

Write Ian at redtv_2005@yahoo.com

Melancholia (Brockway)

Tropic Sprockets by Ian Brockway

Melancholia

Lars von Trier is the L'enfant terrible of current cinema. Few directors provoke. To get a reaction from others is to stimulate and move the mind. Such reactions ranging from delight to disgust proves that cinema, like painting, possesses antennae, transmitters and electric current. Lars von Trier is a director of motion from the subtle to the downright scary. This is no small thing. And he doesn't fail to disappoint or confuse, perhaps leaving his audiences hanging, which is why I find him a compelling director despite his appalling and odd statements about Hitler.

With his latest outing "Melancholia", you might get the feeling that von Trier sees the dark side of everything under the sun and you would probably be right.
The film, although not as visually upsetting as the very graphic "Antichrist", still can make you uncomfortable with its deep close ups of faces numb, dead or in torment. But "Melancholia" at least gives us a bit of breathing space where von Trier's last film was all constriction, German Expressionism and writhing dismemberment.

The film stars Kirsten Dunst as Justine (Marquis de Sade, anyone?). Justine is about to get married but she is a bit... well, moody to say the least. Justine seems oppressed or repressed by some strange draught upon the brain as soon as she enters the Gothic looking mansion where the reception takes place. The mansion is as important as any character in the film and it is positively creepy.

 The bride and groom get stuck in a ditch and of course, arrive late. Soon tension escalates between the bride's father (Jon Hurt) and mother (Charlotte Rampling). The wedding party takes on a disquieting feeling as strong as "Macbeth" or as nerve-jangling as the Hollywood party depicted in "The Exorcist" with a whirling camera showing queasy kids unsettled in sleep as the adults menacingly insult one another in semi-whispers. No one is very likable in the film, but this is Lars von Trierworld. Every film is an emotion unto itself. And usually not a pleasant one.

 Suffice to say, there is a new planet named Melancholia that seems to be listing towards earth and it is making everyone very, very high strung. Granted, you may have seen characters who mope around with unwashed hair in von Trier's films often enough and I know that Kiefer Sutherland is weak, obsessively looking into his microscope and fretting.

 But hold on to your horses.

 The Prologue alone is a film that stands by itself having some of the most startling imagery that you'll ever see. Lars von Trier is a Surrealist par excellence, second only to David Lynch. His stark shadows on a brilliant green golf course would make De Chirico and Magritte weep and rise again, not to mention his faces of children who look like ambivalent or evil-streaked angels fresh from the brush of Botticelli.

 The natural world seems to be both living and removed in Trier's films, pulsing with a numinous intellect, not of this solar system. von Trier's inhabitants often become infantile or regress, consumed with demonic passions long spent in primordial forests half forgotten by our descendants.

 However, not since Andreas Serrano's artwork has there been a man that some love to hate on a personal level,(understandably so) but who also has the ability to show nature in all its sorcery, with all the jarring juxtapositions between our worlds, both the organic and the man-made.

 For cult science fiction fans, this film is nothing less than a visual rendering of J.G. Ballard's upper-class outer worldliness and his stories of doomsday beachcombers and neurotic astronauts, lost on terra firma.

 "Melancholia" is an apprehensive but thoughtful film with vibrant haunting visuals that fall back to the paintings of Salvador Dali and Magritte, while at the same time offering new ways to interpret Luis Bunuel's "Un Chien Andalou" (1928). That should be reason enough to turn your frowning fear for von Trier upside down and see this film.

Write Ian at redtv_2005@yahoo.com

The Skin I Live In (Rhoades)

“The Skin I Live In”

Is Deliberately

Uncomfortable

Reviewed by Shirrel Rhoades

My friend Dave is a retired plastic surgeon. He knows how to do butterfly stitches that don’t leave a scar, implants that change the contour of a face, and skin grafts. I hope he will go see “The Skin I Live In,” the new film by Spanish director Pedro Almodovar. It’s about a plastic surgeon who turns into sort of a demented Dr. Frankenstein.

Not that Dave will identify with Dr. Robert Ledgard, the physician played by Antonio Banderas (“You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger,” “Puss In Boots”). But he may have some thoughts on the burn-resistant artificial skin that Dr. Ledgard has invented. It worked well on mice. Now, how about on a human being?

Well, Dr. Ledgard just happens to have one handy, a beautiful woman he’s holding captive in his palatial mansion in Toledo, Spain. Video screens hang like paintings throughout the estate allowing him to keep watch on her. She’s dressed in a full-body cat suit the color of pale skin, making her look at first glance like a classic nude odalisque canvas by Ingres.

This test subject named Vera is played by Elena Anaya (“Van Helsing,” “Sex and Lucia”). Director Almodóvar had planned to use Penelope Cruz in this role, but scheduling conflicts arose. Frequent collaborators, Almodóvar was largely responsible for transforming Cruz into a screen goddess.

Dr. Ledgard is assisted in his experiment by a loyal housekeeper (Marisa Paredes). She understands what drives the doctor. Twelve years ago his wife was horribly burned in a car crash, like a “cinder” as she describes it. That led to the wife’s suicide. So our doctor is driven to find a cure.

Or is there more to the story?

Yes, indeed. How Vera came to be locked in this bright, modernistic room is the key to the mystery. Ledgard’s daughter Norma (Blanca Suarez) and a young man named Vicente (Jan Cornet) figure into the puzzle.

Some viewers have described “The Skin I live In” as an existential mystery. Others have called it a psychosexual thriller. And still others have pegged it as a medical horror film. The New York Times termed it a polymorphous extravaganza, whatever that is.

Is it a horror film? “I myself am reluctant to label it that way,” says Pedro Almodóvar. “You have to be careful because to hardcore horror fans this will seem like a very strange movie, and I don’t want to disappoint people. But in essence, yes, it is a horror film.”

With a mad genius like Almodóvar (“Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown,” “Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!”) you can expect a film that’s weird, dark, and sometimes funny. He became a leading light of La Movida, the pop cultural movement that blossomed in Spain during the late ’70s. Himself gay, Almodóvar’s films often present strong female characters and transsexuals. Winner in the end, Vera fits this mold.

This film is a reunion, the first collaboration between Almodóvar and his former regular cast member Banderas in 21 years.

“No one played the male characters I wrote in the 1980s better than Antonio Banderas,” says the pudgy director. “But here I didn’t want to repeat what we had done before. I wanted to drain Antonio’s face of all expression and emotion, which is difficult for an actor to do. But his disposition was exactly the same as it used to be, and he gave me the confidence to push forward.”

“The Skin I Live In” (Spanish title: “La piel que habito”) is loosely based on a story by crime novelist Thierry Jonquet called “Mygale” (meaning “Tarantula”). The film is currently playing at the Tropic Cinema.

When a colleague tells Ledgard “You’re insane!” the doctor seems to accept the diagnosis. Banderas, with his weary countenance, is no longer the happy-go-lucky nice guy that inhabits so many of his performances. Here, he allows us to burrow deep under his skin to see the darkness there.

Psychosexual thriller? Mystery? Horror film? It’s all of these. Or you could simply call it a skin flick.

srhoades@aol.com

 [from Solares Hill]

Melancholia (Rhoades)

“Melancholia” Aims

At Being Depressing

Reviewed by Shirrel Rhoades

Feeling low? About 1 in 10 people suffer from depression. This mood disorder is characterized by sadness, anxiety, and hopelessness.

Director Lars von Trier admits that he suffers from clinical depression. Matter of fact, that condition gave him the idea for his latest film “Melancholia.” It’s a somewhat depressing film.

However, sometimes you have a good reason to feel depressed. Despite the accolades his new film received at Cannes (and star Kirsten Dunst being named Best Actress), Von Trier made a faux pas, jokingly comparing himself to Hitler and claiming he was a Nazi in an interview.

“What can I say? I understand Hitler, but I think he did some wrong things, yes, absolutely. ... He’s not what you would call a good guy, but I understand much about him, and I sympathize with him a little bit.”

The Cannes officials didn’t share his “Danish sense of humor” and banned him from the film festival. Now Von Trier has announced he will never give another interview.

That’s enough to make you depressed.

You can see what it’s all about. “Melancholia” is currently sharing Von Trier’s anxieties with audiences at the Tropic Cinema.

His film is divided into three parts:

An Introduction tells the entire story from a cosmic viewpoint, mindful to some of Terrence Malick’s “Tree of Life.” We see outer space, we see a bride, we see planets collide.

Part I is titled “Justine,” after the moody character played by Kirsten Dunst. We see her on the eve of her wedding, putting on a happy face with her new husband Michael (Alexander Skarsgård of TV’s “True Blood”) pretending to appreciate the largess of her brother-in-law (Keifer Sutherland) who footed the bill. Her sister Claire (Charlotte Gainsbourg) acts as her caretaker, trying to keep her on schedule for the cake cutting and avoiding internecine warfare between their loopy father (John Hurt) and bitter mother (Charlotte Rampling). But before the night’s over Justine has lost a husband, told off her boss, and had a sexual encounter with a young guest. No one seems particularly distracted by reports that an errant planet called Melancholia is heading for Earth.

Part II is titled “Claire,” after the sister. Claire is growing more anxious that this runaway planet might collide with Earth. Her husband keeps assuring their son (Cameron Spurr) that it will by-pass them, but she isn’t so sure. The more anxiety this approaching planet causes the family, the more tranquil Justine becomes. In the end, the sisters have swapped caretaker roles, with Justine becoming the calming influence while they await disaster.

That the world comes to an end (cut to black) is no secret. Von Trier showed that in the Introduction “so the audience would not be distracted by the suspense of not knowing the resolution.”

What’s the theme of “Melancholia”? A therapist once told Von Trier that depressive people tend to act more calmly than others under heavy pressure, because they already expect bad things to happen. He developed the idea with actress Penelope Cruz, but a scheduling conflict caused her to be replaced by Kirsten Dunst.

If you find the languorous pacing and meandering storyline of “Melancholia” to be depressing (end of the world, for god’s sake), I suspect Lars von Trier will have accomplished his purpose.

srhoades@aol.com

 [from Solares Hill]

Rum Diary (Rhoades)

“The Rum Diary”

Is 100-Proof

Hunter S. Thompson

Reviewed by Shirrel Rhoades

Back in 1964, while working for the Florida Times Union, I started writing features where I was part of the story. I was one of the first writers to pass myself off as a high-school student and do an insider’s piece. I went flying with the world’s oldest glider pilot. I passed myself off as the world’s worst waiter. I hunted submarines with the navy. I posed as an ambulance driver.

Little did I know I was a Gonzo journalist.

Maybe predating Hunter S. Thompson.

Dr. Thompson is credited as the creator of Gonzo journalism, a style of reporting where reporters involve themselves in the action to such a degree that they become central figures of their stories.

In 1970, Thompson wrote an article entitled “The Kentucky Derby Is Decadent and Depraved” for Scanlan’s Monthly. Journalist Bill Cardoso was the first to use the term to describe Thompson’s writing, praising the piece as a breakthrough: “This is it, this is pure Gonzo. If this is a start, keep rolling.”

Thompson said, “Okay, that’s what I do. Gonzo.” It was a style he would later employ in almost every literary endeavor.

Hunter S. Thompson liked hanging out in Key West. Getting zonked with his local pals, partying with Jimmy Buffet and Tom Corcoran and Lloyd Good of Sugarloaf Lodge.

A documentary filmmaker named Wayne Ewing brought him back to Key West in 1986. “The idea was to make a short, entertaining pilot to prove to the right television programmer that Dr. Hunter S. Thompson could actually host his own regular television series,” recalls Ewing. “We were going to call the show either the ‘Gonzo Tour’ or ‘Breakfast with Hunter’ – the latter being Jack Nicholson’s clever idea spoofing morning television talk shows.”

Ewing continues, “Once in Key West among his old friends – drug smugglers, drunks, and Jimmy Buffett – he was much less forthcoming. We all stayed in Hunter’s favorite Florida motel – the Sugar Loaf Lodge on Sugar Loaf Key, about 15 minutes from Key West proper. His girlfriend Maria was there, along with his secretary Deborah. A captive, one-eyed dolphin named Sugar swam endlessly in circles in the motel lagoon while we waited for Hunter to perform for the camera each day.

“After a week at the Sugar Loaf, I figured Hunter was actually in front of my camera for a total of about two hours. He never arose until well after noon, no matter what plan we made the night before, and when I went to beat on his door he would mumble that he needed to take a shower. The water would go on, and it could still be heard running when I returned a half hour later. Of course, Hunter had gone back to bed (‘I never turn on the hot water,’ he would say in defense of the ruse).”

As Ewing recalls, “The Sugar Loaf Lodge Management (who actually were rather fond of Hunter from his previous stays) threatened to kick us all out, unless one of us moved in next door to him. The loud sounds in the middle of the night – light bulbs exploding, Maria gurgling as if she were being strangled – were upsetting the guests next door who checked out complaining bitterly.”

On a boat ride, a school of dolphins began to swim alongside. “I’m back, Boys,” Hunter called out to them.

Now Hunter Thompson is back in Key West in the form of Johnny Depp, his stand-in for a new movie titled “The Rum Diary.” You can catch it at the Tropic Cinema. Not only was Depp a close friend of Thompson, he also played him in the earlier film “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.”

“The Rum Diary” is based on Thompson’s semi-autobiographical novel. Written in 1961 when he was 22, it wasn’t published until 1998. The manuscript “bounced about seven times,” Thompson recalled. “I got the standard list of rejection letters.” It was his second novel, although the first has yet to be published. In need of money, he was “faced with the fact of having to dig out my 40-year old story” and find a publisher.

The novel (and the movie) tells of Paul Kemp (Johnny Depp), a footloose journalist who travels to Puerto Rico to write for The San Juan Star. He begins drinking too much rum and becomes obsessed with a woman named Chenault (Amber Heard).

Set in the late 1950s, it’s billed as “a tangled love story of jealousy, treachery and violent alcoholic lust among the Americans who staff the newspaper.”

Truth is, Hunter S. Thompson took a job with El Sportivo, a San Juan sports newspaper which folded soon after his arrival. He applied for a position with The San Juan Star, but editor William J. Kennedy turned him down. Nonetheless, the two men became friends and great drinking buddies. His friendship with the writers at the Star provided the inspiration for “The Rum Diary” storyline.

Director Bruce Robinson decided to write the screenplay for the film version himself. A recovering alcoholic, he had been sober for six-and-a-half years but started drinking again until he finished the script and then quit drinking again. Method writing a la Hunter Thompson?

He stayed on the wagon until they started filming in Puerto Rico. “It was 100 degrees at two in the morning and very humid,” he recalls. “Everyone's drenched in sweat. One of the prop guys goes by with a barrow-load of ice and Coronas. I said: ‘Johnny, this doesn’t mean anything.’ And reached for a Corona ... Some savage drinking took place. When I was no longer in Johnny’s environment I went back to sobriety.” Method directing?

Johnny Depp describes his performance as “No Extreme Hunter like I did in the Vegas movie. The Hunter of that film was somewhat hyped. Now I’m trying to get at the essence of the young Hunter. Everything he said was so (blank)ing funny you had to write it down.” Party on.

Finally, the party was over. Faced with health problems, Hunter S. Thompson committed suicide in 2005 at the age of 67.

Johnny Depp claims two mentors: Marlon Brando and Thompson. “Selfishly, what I miss about Hunter isn’t the Too Much Fun Club stuff,” he says. “It was his steady advice. His radar detector was spot-on. He knew instantly if he didn’t like somebody.”

Depp owns a 45-acre island in the Bahamas. He named a beach in honor of his friend Hunter: Gonzo Beach.

srhoades@aol.com

 [from Solares Hill]

Toast (Rhoades)

“Toast” Is Buttered

On Both Sides

Reviewed by Shirrel Rhoades

When a fussy gay chef writes his boyhood memoirs what would you expect them to be about? Food, of course. And a cooking competition between him and his encroaching stepmother.

You see, when Nigel Slater’s mum passes away from chronic asthma, the voluptuous cleaning lady Mrs. Potter (Helen Bonham Carter) decides to cook her way into his dad’s heart – literally and figuratively. Thus, young Nigel (Freddie Highmore) enters into a competition for his dad’s affection.

An epicurean delight, “Toast” is currently playing at the Tropic Cinema.

This British TV film directed by S.J. Clarkson remains fairly true to Slater’s autobiography – and even pays him a nod with a cameo appearance as – what else? – a chef who hires the boy at the end of the film.

The film is beautifully shot, from the opening scenes that swoop along the shelves of a 1960s market to the boy’s pouring over food magazines by flashlight under the cover to the hotel kitchens of London where the boy winds up.

Along the way, Nigel and his stepmother enter into a culinary one-upmanship to win the affections of his ever-broadening dad (Ken Stott). But it’s hard to compete with stockened legs and a to-die-for lemon meringue pie.

Eventually, as in most fairytales, he muss set out on his own.

We’re not sure whether Nigel Slater’s title – “Toast” – refers to the simple bread or a haughty raising his glass to a woman who out cooked him.

srhoades@aol.com

 [from Solares Hill]