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Show WASATCH COUNTY COURER = 17, 2001 B12 | Four Films to Go es her status as a fearful and frustrated virgin. Her jobs at local second-hand clothing stores don’t last since it’s easy to stuff a dress or two into her handbag before she goes out the door. But there is something about her — her’ anger aad unhappiness, her wit (yes, a piercing wit), those odd moments where she acknowledges her own intelligence — that makes us willing voyeurs for a young life sliding into transition. She wants her own place that will make her forget her doting mother and her estranged father John Goodman), who bailed years ago. But she needs some kind — of regular job to pull it off. As if setting sail for an alien planet, a ventures to the Mall, almost eager to play out self-fulfilling prophecies of employment rejection by uptight and bourgeois business people. She gets her wish, and even provokes an ugly little name-calling scene with one antagonist, the proprietor of an up-scale clothing store. He throws her out of his shop, | but then thinks better of it when he notices her still sitting _ outside his display window. Randall (Albert Brooks), a middle-aged merchant who buries himself in his job and in magazines, notices her unabashed and unapologetic quality and how it is tinged with a curious vulnerability. “J” gets a job audition, but is ‘relegated to the stockroom once she has agreed to dispense with her distinguishing jewelry. But she won't stay there. She barges into everyone’s business, particularly the | personal life of Randall’s (or “R..” as she calls him), and is soon remaking herself as a fearless and unorthodox salesperson. Their developing relationship, pushed by. and resisted _ by R,, is capricious, argumentative and problematic. But it is real. That they are rejecting societal norms and pressing into parts of each other’s lives that both have closely guarded is both stimulating and unsettling. We’re not quite sure ~ where the story is headed at this point. But where it takes _ us is partly predictable, partly surprising and wholly irresistible. Working with screenwriter J ill Franklyn for over a year. to make My First Mister deeper and to achieve parity between the two principal characters, Lahti chose Albert Brooks (Broadcast News, Defending Your Life) to play R. because he projects a quality opposite to that of the “predatory Hollywood male,” she said. -—“He’s sexy.-in his own | dekh way, but you don’t ? COURIER STAFF The Sundance Film Festival, which opens Thursday in Salt Lake City, and _ Friday in Park City, is larger than ever (124 feature films and 39 shorts), more crowded and perhaps less convivial than in the old days. But the best thing about it remains the same: The thrill of discovering a new independent movie with a spirited audience in a darkened auditorium. Sundance be — pictures are chosen for their unusual storytelling flair and their willingness to take risks that mainstream Hollywood moviemaking is seldom willing to consider. | Because Sundance has lent credibility and significance to the independent _ 2 film movement, more and more actors and actresses now build their careers in synch with a filmmaking style that is less interested in formula fare and special effects and more interested in telling fresh stories in new and original ways. That description would fit the festival’s 2001 Piper Heidsieck winner, | Julianne Moore, who will be honored Saturday, Jan. 20, in the Mary G. Steiner Egyptian Theater in Park City. Moore's recent performances have ranged from a mid-western housewife in A Map of the World, a conniving blackmailer in An Ideal Husband, the drug-dependent trophy wife in Magnolia, the slightly loony small town southerner in Cookie’s Fortune and the Spiritually conflicted diple” mat’s wife in The End of the Affair. Festival-goers scouting for a few disparate films to put their money on at | Sundance 2001 may wish to take a cue from this mini-guide, culled from press _ pre-screenings a week before the festival opened. SOUTHERN COMFORT — Kate - Davis’s tight, little documentary about _ There is a single scene in which J. offers herself to R. and is rejected, But be aware that the picture’s boisterous sense of humor that juxtaposes the restraint and embarrassment of the Brooks and Place characters (both from a more conservative generation) with the uncensored vivacity of Sobieski’s J. could easily offend those Utah audiences who save themselves for video versions of modern movies ‘that have been safely and surgically altered to achieve rhetorical purity. But My First Mister is not made to efevoke the religious right or confront traditional proprieties. It is funny, moving and original and cuts across a myriad of sensibilities. It is a variety of other “F” words besides the notorious one that assume the greater significance—fear, friendship, family and forever. _ “My objective with this film was not to break any new ground in form or camera work,” Lahti told the Courier. “T - wanted to tell a good story that would move and transport audiences.” Lahti will not give up acting (‘it’s something I’m really pas; sionate about”) even if this movie brings her a ton of attractive screenplays that translate to directing assignments. Nor will she stint on parenting Wilson and her twins, Emma and Joe, 7. “T love going to work and I love being a mom,” she says. “Tommy and I (Tom Schlamme, Lahti’s husband and the executive producer of TV’s most critically praised show, ‘The West Wing’) both have jobs that we love. As Kate : Austin, my character on ‘Chicago Hope,’ says, ‘If we give nm eating, sleeping and bathing, we can do it all.” - | an unforgettable collection of Southerners gathering to gut out the final days of Robert Eads, a female-tomale transsexual, dying of ovarian cancer. The picture may change forever how you think about the folks who | inhabit the sub culture. When Eads tells; his “girlfriend,” Lola Cola, a male-to4 female transsexual, about his earlier pregnancies while coming to grips with his identity crisis as a man inside a female body, the poignancy triumphs . ‘over the strangeness. In fact, one gets to know prise the ue group of friends who com- Transsexual love story: Robert Eads and Lola “cast” for this movie so well, Gola in Southern Comfort. their reality and regard for each other tends to make you forget their sexual orientations. expect him to make the moves,” Lahti said. “I hadn’t seen him do the kind of emotional work that is required for this role, but whenI met him in person he convinced me he could do it—and he was convinced himself that he could do it. He was so eager and willing to go there and to put himself in my hands and trust me. “Jill and Albert and LeeLee and I all knew that the screenplay had a potential for sentimentality and that we wanted to go instead for honest emotion. It was a no-brainer that Albert had the sort of gallows humor to deflect the pain and undercut the sentiment. He’s not an emotionally indulgent actor, but he uses humor to make a character © work—that’s his natural way.” Lahti says she and Franklyn Watted ¢ to make a two-way Pygmalion story so that the lead characters—both “disenfranchised and dead in a way”—would each have something to teach the other. “I did not want to make a story that was pri_ marily sexual. I'd seen two many older friends with younger — ~ girlfriends who could have been their daughters. I’m tired of the double standard and that is not the film I wanted to make.” BS JUMP TOMORROW — bac of those unpretentious but excitable Sundance romantic comedies in which the screenplay’s naiveté and the film’s amateurish _ feeling work for it rather than against it. Writer-director Joel Hopkins takes us on a road trip with two lovesick males, one of whom, George or Jorge (Tonde Adebimpe) is en route to an arranged marriage with a childhood friend from Nigeria; the other, Gerard, a depressed French expatriate (Hippolyte Gardot), just dumped by his fiancée. At several points along the trip toward Niagara Falls, they interact with the sprightly Alicia (Natalia Verbeke) and her erudite but clueless English professor fiancé (James Wilby), who are hitchhiking to the Canadian border. The catalyst for . -romantic chaos is Alicia’s mother (Patricia Mauceri), who offers food and respite to = : one A bumpy road to love: Natalia Verbeke and _ funde Adebimpe in Jump Tomorrow. the travelers. INVISIBLE REVOLUTION — Beverly Peterson’s disturbing documentary about young racists and their radical counterparts in an organization called Anti-Racist Action (ARA) in the American heartland of Ohio, Michigan and other Midwestern states. The filmmaker takes a hands-off approach, leaving judgements to the audience. While one may be initially cheered that organized opposition to bigotry and hate has spontaneously erupted among young, working class whites, the _ tendency of the anti-fascists to use similar harsh rhetoric and to reinforce the - racists’ contention that the ultimate solution may be violence is highly unsettling. ~ The film’s greatest value may be its glimpse of opposing subcultures largely ignored by mainstream media. THE DISH —- A quirky reminiscence about real events in Australia during © 1969’s moon landing, made by the folks who gave us last year’s saucy Aussie come- | dy, The Castle. Charming, subtle and often _ hilarious, the picture pokes fun at local politicians, American arrogance and Australian defensiveness at having to play electronic errand boy for the image and soundtrack for a worldwide extravaganza — the moon landing broadcast, which is cap- _ tured by the southern hemisphere’s largest _ satellite dish, located in a sheep paddock in-an Aussie outback. Low-key and appeal- _ing performances by Sam Neill, Patrick Warburton, Genevieve mo Taylor Kane. ae Long and The Dish aa a FROM - A Sundance Primer: FILM FESTIVAL CONTINUED | rT] JANUARY |