OUTFEST 2015: NASTY BABY

Mo (Tunde Adebimpe) and Polly (Kristen Wiig) in Nasty Baby.

Population disconnection

By Miranda Inganni

Polly (Kristen Wiig) really wants to have a baby. So does her friend, Freddy (Sebastián Silva). Unfortunately, Freddy’s sperm ain’t cutting it, so his partner, Mo (Tunde Adebimpe) has to step in.

Unlike Freddy’s sperm, the three friends get along swimmingly, even when their bohemian Brooklyn life is interrupted by the local mentally unstable, quasi-homeless, sometimes-violent, homophobe who calls himself “The Bishop” (Reg E. Cathey).  In the meantime, when not having hip dinner parties and getting high, Freddy is working on a new video installation entitled “Nasty Baby,” which features him and his friends acting like babies.

Starting out as a sweet buddy study, Nasty Baby takes an unexpected turn for the violent. Perhaps Silva took on too much in this film (for which he wrote the screenplay, directs and stars in – as well as featuring his brother, cat and apartment in the film), as it feels like it lacks a definitive voice and focus. The film is overshadowed by a sense of subtlety, with the threesome casually chumming it up, until it is aggressively not subtle. Things escalate so very quickly in a non-realistic way.

Why would Polly lie about being pregnant? Does no one have any common sense? Has Polly’s medical training taught her nothing? What does neighbor Richard (Mark Margolis) actually do other than show up at convenient times and own a vehicle?

Nasty Baby’s inconsistency is a detriment to what would otherwise be an exploration of a lovely, if unconventional, family origin story.

 

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LAFF 2015: MAIKO - DANCING CHILD

Maiko Nishino-Ekeberg in Maiko: Dancing Child.

Dance by no chance

By Miranda Inganni

Maiko Nishino-Ekeberg knew as a young child that she wanted her life to be about ballet. Even the name her parents gave her, Maiko, meaning "dancing child," was as if it were her destiny. When Nishino-Ekeberg was around 14 years old, her parents sent her to the Royal Ballet in London to ensure she got the best training, having to sell their house and car and move in with Maiko’s grandparents so they could afford to do so. Nishino-Ekeberg felt like this was a debt she could only repay by succeeding as a dancer. When Nishino-Ekeberg finally had her first big breakthrough in her mid-20s, she finally felt like she had said “thank you” to her parents, especially her mother who instilled a fierce resolve in Nishino-Ekeberg.

Now at the height of her career as a dancer with the National Norwegian Ballet, Nishino-Ekeberg wants (and is being pressured by her mother -- still so much control!) to start a family with her husband, Nicolai (who does not say much in the documentary). Nishino-Ekeberg knows full well that if she doesn’t stay in top condition she will lose her place as prima ballerina (there are plenty of other dancers waiting in the wings to take her place). Though she is cautioned by her doctor, dancers and, most sternly, her mother, Nishino-Ekeberg is determined, passionate and even stubborn. She has to be the best; the best ballerina; the best mother. And only dancing the lead role in Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake (known as the most physically demanding role in classical ballet) will prove to her that she is still the best.

Making its world premiere at the Los Angeles Film Festival, Ase Svenheim Drivens’ first full length feature, Maiko – Dancing Child could easily be fiction, but it is in fact a documentary. Nishino-Ekeberg is physically stunning and camera-ready: all long lines and flawless features. Her story is one of sheer ambition, determination and discipline. And training. Lots and lots of training! Despite a cheesy, child voiceover (ostensibly reading Maiko’s letters to her mother from when she was a young girl), Maiko chronicles the endurance it takes to stay on top once you have hit your high point(e) in ballet. 

Unfortunately, we get only a brief glimpse at the hurt Nishino-Ekeberg still carries from missing her mother during her childhood and the psychological ramifications are not explored in the film. What Nishino-Ekeberg sees as only love, others might sense as domineering. What we do see is a woman in her mid-thirties reclaim her position of prestige while she pirouettes.


Maiko: Dancing Child screens at LAFF: June 16, 3:30, Regal Cinemas. For more information: Maiko.

 

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FILM REVIEW: EMOTICON ;)

Elena (Livia De Paolis) and Hanna (Carol Kane) in Emoticon ;).

Connections

By Don Simpson

Elena (Livia De Paolis) is fascinated by modern means of communication but she cannot seem to wrap her head around how to develop that interest into a graduate school thesis. But then Elena finds herself fully immersed into the very modern worlds of her significantly older boyfriend Walter’s (Michael Cristofer) adopted teenage kids, Amanda (Diane Guerrero) and Luke (Miles Chandler). This allows Elena to gain firsthand insight on how these two particular teens utilize different types of technology as existential tools to better understand themselves.

Though many of Emoticon ;)‘s comments on modern communication are annoyingly obvious, De Paolis’ directorial debut works well as a subtle contemplation of family that intimately observes how adoption and divorce may affect family units. Not only is there a natural generational divide between Walter and his kids, but they are not intrinsically bound by DNA. With sole custody of the teenagers, Walter has adopted a laissez-faire approach to parenting, focusing his time on teaching and dating. Having very little parental oversight, Amanda and Luke are forced to learn everything for themselves. Elena’s keen interest in their lives is resisted at first, but that tide turns quickly. Starving for parental support during their existential struggles, Amanda and Luke latch onto Elena. Not quite old enough to be their mother, Elena’s understanding of technology allows her to form an intimate connection with the Amanda and Luke, becoming their friend and confidant, something they have seemingly never experienced with a parental figure before.

Emoticon ;) also addresses the role that race may play in adoption. While Luke was able to easily adjust to his adoptive parents and their neighborhood (Gramercy, Manhattan) because he is Caucasian, Amanda basically had to ignore her Mexican roots and assimilate herself into their white, upperclass world. Once Amanda meets her first “brown” friend, her life is changed forever. Amanda is driven by the desire to learn about the biological past that has been hidden from her thus far.

De Paolis’ refreshingly feminine perspective is most apparent in her handling of unplanned pregnancies, specifically in the way the female characters are affected by these situations. Emoticon ;) serves as a perfect example of why we need more feminine directorial voices in the world of cinema.

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LAFF 2011: BAD INTENTIONS

Cayetana de la Heros (Fatima Buntinx) in Bad Intentions.

Death to the bourgeoisie

By Don Simpson

Writer-director Rosario Garcia-Montero’s The Bad Intentions is a coming-of-age story which centers around a quirky-yet-morose nine-year-old girl, Cayetana de la Heros (Fatima Buntinx). Cayetana’s parents (Katerina D'Onofrio and Jean Paul Strauss) are divorced -- which, as she learns at her Catholic school, means they are going to hell. Cayetana is raised primarily by the servants (Liliana Alegría, Tania Ruiz, Melchor Gorrochátegui) at her Valium-popping mother’s bourgeois home in Lima, Peru. Whenever Cayetana does spend time with her mother, she devises new and interesting ways to play torturous mind games with her. And though Cayetana’s father seems too preoccupied with life -- especially attractive young women -- to pay her much mind, Cayetana idolizes him nonetheless.

As her surname suggests, Cayetana is obsessed with heroes. It seems most of Peru’s heroes are losers and Cayetana is specifically interested in their heroic deaths. Cayetana’s fascination with death, especially violent deaths during battle, lends her the morbid air of a Peruvian Wednesday Addams. Death’s allure becomes even more personal when Cayetana suddenly -- and quite irrationally -- concludes that she will die on the day that her pregnant mother gives birth. Cayetana is not very worried about dying, but she seems utterly frightened of being rendered invisible.

Of her entire family, Cayetana’s most sane and rewarding relationship is with her cousin, Jimena (Kani Hart). When Cayetana becomes too much for her mother to handle, she is sent to spend the summer at the beach with her cousin. When Jimena becomes mysteriously ill, Cayetana is snapped back into reality. Death is more than just a magic realism-tinged dream; death becomes real for Cayetana.

The Bad Intentions takes place in 1982 and the brutal guerrilla attacks of the Maoist group, the Shining Path (Sendero Luminoso), hover around the periphery of the narrative. The terrorists always seem to be lurking around the corner; as the violence creeps closer to Cayetana, her mind is catapulted into more frequent and fervent daydreams about Peru’s past war heroes.

Garcia-Montero’s film functions as an absurd allegory for bourgeois feelings of ambivalence towards an uncertain future. The invisible yet always-present threat of death has warped repercussions in the mind of a nine-year-old child; Cayetana is riddled with Catholic guilt, consciously for her parents’ unholy divorce and subconsciously for being a part of a bourgeois household that is quite similar to the colonialists that her favorite revolutionary heroes fought against.

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