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Show f ' " . V i 7 i.' ; I A ill The Sundance byRONGEORG Record staff writer Critics' screenings for the Sundance Film Festival began this week, and if the first offering is any indicator, there is some stiff competition for the dramatic competition this year. It's called Cay Food Lodging --or Gas, Food, and Lodging as in the Film Guide or Gas, Food Lodging as in the film's opening. And while small details such as the graphic and grammatical design of the title may be unresolved right up until a film's premiere, this is one film with enough resolution of its own to make up for last minute inconsistencies. Gas Food Lodging (presumably the correct arrangement) is, at the very least, a contender for the coveted Audience Award, the prize which often says the most about a film's potential success. Music The Deer Valley International Chamber Music Festival is holding a performance and a fundraiser this weekend. See page CS for details. Wffi i lone Skye and Fairuza Film Festival will feature healthy competition Allison Anders created this picture, adapting the screenplay from Richard Peck's novel Don't Look Back and it Won't Hurt and directing final product. The single mother of two teenage daughters found the story personally satisfying, and she says she found issues in the book which related to her own life. That's why she accepted the challenge from producer Carl Colpaert-and that probably also has something to do with the film's successful exploration of relatively new ground. Anders has proven the genre of women's films can also cross over into more popular culture. The story of Nora (Brooke Adams), a truck stop waitress who's raising two teenage daughters, Shade (Fairuza Balk) and Trudy Gone Skye), Gas Food Lodging is especially accessible given men's slow evolution toward greater acceptance, if not understanding, of women's needs and Cinema JFK is a long-awaited Oliver Stone relcase-and while the film is entertaining, it exposes Stone's view more than any history - -- - - Balk star in Gas Food Lodging desires. The story probes gently into the delicate gender rift. Ironically, Chris Mulkey is featured as a peripheral male with more hormones than brains. Festival-goers may remember Mulkley in Patti Rocks a couple years ago; the two films stand as perfect examples of the same topic from different perspectives, one male, one female. And just as it was appropriate for women to sit through the macho, chauvinistic, foul rantings of Mulkley in Patti Rocks, it is wholly appropriate, if not mandatory, that men sit through and try to understand the stoic (and humanly amusing) line of Anders' perspective. While men tend toward Mulkley's goofy charm, women aren't fooled by it-tney're just suckers for it Gas Food Lodging is told from Shade's point of view. The young woman is just developing, and she's escaping much of the confusion of puberty by going to the Spanish cinema in their home town of Laramie, New Mexico, to see her favorite star. But her escape can never be too far in the small town where her mother is a waitress at the town's apparently most popular restaurant and her older sister is a high school party girl (Lf you missed that, "party girl" is British tabloid slang for a . disreputable young lady.) Added to that, her mother is single and they're living in a mobile home. They can't get away from one another, but, even if they wanted to break apart, they're hopelessly bonded (men take note-this is one of those women things this film might teach you about. see GAS on C4 Film Festival The Sundance Film Festival opens next weekend, but tickets are already available in Park City. See page C4 for more information. |