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Features
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Written by Noralil Ryan Fores
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Thursday, 17 April 2008 |
Reviews:
 Photo Courtesy Sarasota Film Festival. Both grandly humorous and humane, Hélène de Crécy's The Consultation serves perhaps better as a sociological rather than a character study. Although charismatic family doctor Luc Perino holds the doc's center as he diagnoses and treats common ailments, his personal perspective takes the back seat to the often mundane and absurd dilemmas of his not entirely reliable patients. As his motley crew of hypochondriacs, schizophrenics and neurotics bemoan work environments, demand cocktails of unnecessary meds and seek in Perino solutions to psychological conundrums, it's both easy to empathize with the doctor's tremendous compassion and difficult not to see a bit the self reflected in the everymen he encounters. Read more.
 Photo Courtesy Sarasota Film Festival. In a capitalist culture, even the young fall prey to the ecstasy and anxiety of the next big spend, and no more clearly is this noted than in Lauren Greenfield's kids+money, an absolutely inspired, enlightening and more than slightly terrifying reality check that studies Los Angeles consumerism and the teens it effects. From the private school privileged to the single mom working class households, the short doc exploits a slyly ironic pop aesthetic, beautifully lensed by David Rush Morrison, to reflect the environment of excess that bears with it the huge sense of sadness cut along the edge of socioeconomic difference. The film lingers in memory, not only for its outrageous moments of subtle humor, its lasting moments of the bittersweet but also its irrefutable social relevance, precision in research and much labored over crafting. Witty and tender commentary both, kids+money showcases the very best about why documentaries are made. Read more.
 Photo Courtesy Sarasota Film Festival. In Columbia, a country struggling with civil war and severe poverty, fervor for the beauty pageant counters the social strife with a hopeful, sometimes kitschy supremacy. In a women's prison, the inmates battling boredom, frustration and depression, the pageants function the same way, serving as a necessary annual reprieve from the bitterness of being without family, security and freedom. Following four contestant favorites, Amanda Micheli and Isabel Vega's Academy-award nominated short doc La Corona (The Crown) explores without judgement the lives of armed robbers, murderesses and criminals born of desperation as each primps and pines for the coveted title. Read more.
 Photo Courtesy Sarasota Film Festival.Turning the typical body image doc on its head, Jesse Epstein's The Guarantee has great fun with itself. As former professional ballet dancer Charles Farruggio talks about the pressure laid upon him by instructors to get a nose job, visual artist Robert Castillo sketches out the story in quirky detail. Although Farruggio is never seen on film, the portrait Castillo renders pops from the page with all the humanity and humor of the narration, making for a short that blends playfulness and serious commentary about self versus societal perception. Read more.
 Photo Courtesy Sarasota Film Festival. At the top of an apartment building, a certain quiet, adoring Him (Joshua Safdie) lives alone. At the bottom a hard to approach Her (Charlotte Pinson) has caught his eye. It's only when litterbug neighbor Stephen (Stephen Schneider), who lives in the floor between the two, throws garbage out of his window that the two see each other at all, or rather only he sees the back of her head. Smart, absurd and heartwarmingly innocent, Joshua Safdie's The Back of Her Head is a dessert short, that euphoriant treat that could in endless play still mesmerize with its sweetness and richness of story. Read more.
 Photo Courtesy Sarasota Film Festival. As if taking a loving jab at modernity's obsession with personal chronicle, Benjamin Kasulke's Crustväska simply points a camera at two men and captures their conversation, and although the comparison might seem apt, the subtly and infectiously funny slice of life short carves its own niche that well outshines home video stylings. Read more.
 Photo Courtesy Sarasota Film Festival. Teenage Vanessa Lemor (Ellen Hornberger) and boyfriend Philip Georgey (Miles Thompson) aren't quite seeing eye to eye. Already signed up for his summer Spanish class and settled in as the manager of the ice-cream stand, he's ready to move on to better relationships. Meanwhile, neighborhood child eccentrics Hercules Howard (Zachary Lapes) and Nothing Madeline Amigone (Samantha Futerman) contend against their self-imposed solitude and societal fringe status. As the three lonely souls bond together, it's clear that Suzi Yoonessi's ambitious Dear Lemon Lima isn't a short film really; it's a feature waiting to happen. Read more.
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Noralil Ryan Fores |
| About the author: |
| Editor. A perpetual wanderer both literally and metaphorically, Noralil Ryan Fores grew up in a theater with an acting teacher for a mother and a professional videographer for a father. Right in line with her upbringing, she went on to study in the film program at Florida State University then jumped ship to grab a graduate degree in Magazine, Newspaper and Online Journalism from Syracuse University's S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications. She has interned for South Florida's City Link Magazine and served as an editorial assistant for MovieMaker Magazine. Currently, she lives and writes from Atlanta. |
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