SANTA FE REPORTER
Santa Fe Independent Film Festival: ‘Falls Around Her’ Review
"Rebel," sings soon-to-be-ex-singer Mary Birchbark (Tantoo Cardinal), who, set finished, rushes off-stage, out the door, and back to her First Nations reservation in Canada to re-establish a home without looking back. Her manager tries to convince her to perform an encore, but she's long gone. Rebelled. The effects of this rebellion and the ensuing struggle to find her new identity—or reclaim a stolen one—are the things that fall around her in Darlene Naponse's Falls Around Her.
Cardinal's performance in reaction to the exploitation her character suffers at the hands of the music industry is at once steadfast and expressive. The camera continually returns to close-up views of her face as it portrays her emotional being in an old world new again to her; contentedness at a walk in the woods or concern at the prospect of mining operations on her land are all cast against a snowy backdrop of frozen Northern lakes that, over the course of the movie, begin to thaw and turn green with spring.
While the camera work and acting contribute to a cohesive whole, parts of the plot, for example, the scenes with the mining company or those with Birchbark's lover, contribute little to the overall story arc and approach pastiche in the way they present a trope with little previous development or subsequent take-away.
However, the substance of the environmental (and, in the final scene, domestic) crimes portrayed in the movie are as psychological specters for Birchbark, which contribute to the overall unraveling she experiences throughout the film as she comes to adjust to—and enforce—her post-performing life. It's no wonder Cardinal is being awarded a lifetime achievement award by the Santa Fe Independent Film Festival; throughout the film, her resolute face offers mere glimpses of the hidden strengths and fears that are fully revealed and resolved in the climax, and it is that face, that pure acting, which kept us watching, despite the occasional gaps in plot.
By Cole Rehbein
“International Falls” directed by Amber McGinnis
Santa Fe Independent Film Festival: ‘International Falls’ Review
Not haha funny
In filmmaker Amber McGinnis' International Falls, a comedy veteran named Tim Fletcher and closet comedian Dee Williamson remind us of the perils of living inauthentically. Rob Huebel (Do You Want to See a Dead Body?) plays Fletcher, an end-of-the-line comic arriving in an end-of-the-line town on Minnesota's border with Canada. Rachel Harris (Diary of a Wimpy Kid) is Dee, the hotel desk clerk who suspects standup comedy might give her the voice she craves to speak out against a life that is slowly suffocating her.
Harris and Huebel have an easy onscreen rapport that begins during check-in when she tells him that he's edgy—edgy like Steve Guttenberg. Dee is unhappily stuck in a marriage on life support while Tim is deeply sad; obviously they hit it off.
But for a film about a couple of people enamored with comedy, International Falls is not a laugh fest. Thomas Ward's script is in capable hands with McGinnis and her cast, including SNL and Weeds alum Kevin Nealon and Matthew Glave (The Wedding Singer's Glenn Guglia). There are some genuinely funny moments among some really hard ones.
Huebel's Fletcher has decided the hotel-bar-weekend-headliner gig will be his last. He's not a great comic—and we see it in his final, wincing performance—but his yearning for connection, for authenticity, is real, and the stuff that makes up what we love about great standup comics. Talking to Dee after his last set, he lays himself bare, giving her the perspective he could have and should have used in his life on stage.
This is the first feature-length film for McGinnis, who has a self-professed mission of telling "stories to help create a more empathetic world." She largely succeeds.
By Matt Grubs
Santa Fe Independent Film Festival: ‘Imaginary Order’ Review
Suburban shitshow
Known primarily for laughs, certified comedy genius Wendi McLendon-Covey (Bridesmaids) spreads out into strange drama in Imaginary Order, a subversive, excruciating look at suburban American family life and just how tenuous and absurd it can be.
McLendon-Covey is Cathy, a middle-aged mom in a stalled marriage and at the cusp of her middle school-aged daughter's rebellious phase, who falls in with the decidedly more carefree Gemma Jean (Hey Ladies star Christine Woods) while cat-sitting for her sister. Ditching the claustrophobic routine of her daily life for day-drinking and painkillers, Cathy, who fights the change at first but gives in rather easily, begins to come apart, sleeping with her new friend's husband, distrusting her own spouse because of it and, maybe worst of all, losing her sister's cat while on drugs. Reeling, Cathy forms a strange pseudo-emotional relationship with Gemma Jeans' 15-year-old son Xander (Max Burkholder) who soon becomes obsessed, and her weird-yet-banal double life begins to show up on her doorstep when Xander sets his eyes on her daughter Tara (Kate Alberts) after Cathy makes it clear they won't be sleeping together.
McLendon-Covey is a revelation, all bubbling anxieties and not-so-subtle internal emotional explosions as even her lower-stakes lies begin catching up with her. The center of her family's orbit, she gives her version of her all only to be beaten down, unappreciated and downright insulted—we don't blame her for needing a release. And for this, we love her, even when we kind of hate her; as anyone who leads a stressful life can attest to, sometimes people are hanging on by a thread.
East Bound and Down's Steve Little provides a delightfully unexpected turn as the shitheel husband who hasn't necessarily done anything wrong, but who isn't exactly innocent, either, and Burkholder's portrayal of lovesick teen is so painfully spot-on that we cringe despite our best attempts at empathy; he's pathetic even as he thinks he's being cool and even as he's obviously ripping off EE Cummings.
And so it all comes to a sort of open-ended head. It's unclear if there's a specific moral or lesson, though there often isn't one in our lives. Regardless, if this is the kind of film we can expect from writer-director Debra Eisenstadt moving forward, we picture great things.
By Alex De Vore
Santa Fe Independent Film Festival: ‘Mr Toilet: The World’s #2 Man’ Review
Jack Sim wants you to know that "the toilet is a spiritual room." And first-time documentarian Lily Zepeda, who's been aiding Sim in his worldwide quest to spread the gospel of quarantined shit, wants you to know that a global dearth of such physical channels to the almighty is as big a global problem as any other you could possibly name.
This dual desire birthed Mr Toilet: The World's #2 Man, a wee piece of film that alternates between an unflinching look into the outhouse of one of Earth's most pressing concerns, an under-developed character sketch of Sim and some truly delightful slices of animated transition that come as a welcome surprise from someone who's never made a movie before.
Sim's tale is well-worn for anyone who's paid attention to the planet's "sanitation" or "outdoor defecation" crisis: 2.5 billion earthlings don't have toilets, which causes pollution in water supplies and leads to all manner of disease worldwide, and Sim has been trying to convince the world that toilets are worth fighting for. Zepeda and her eye for odd detail—be it acres of human feces scattered along riverbanks, Sim's deranged oil-on-canvas self-portraits, sweeping aerials of the world's largest fair—render his struggle more human than the BBC, The Guardian or any other news organization that's ever tried to highlight his work ever could have.
The film succeeds visually throughout; there were several stretches during which we wish Zepeda had just slammed the mute button. But she's trying to do more, namely, tell the viewer who Sim really is, why he's chosen such an unattractive cause, and that effort falls flat in the final analysis. Still, Mr Toilet is worth the hour and a half if even just for the issue: Admit it—you've never considered the grand kaka as something with which your social conscious should engage.
By Jeff Proctor
Santa Fe Independent Film Festival: ‘Opia’ Review
Surreal exploration of trauma sometimes feels too abstract to follow, other times emotionally cathartic
The debut feature film from local writer-director Siena Sofia Bergt, Opia is a dark, surreal meditation on guilt and loss that feels like getting sucked into a bad dream and spiraling slowly into nightmare.
Through the lens of Celia (Helana Gabriella), Opia drops the viewer into the unraveling reality of a trauma-stricken college student grappling with the aftermath of a suicide. Bergt's storytelling feels right for the gravity and incomprehensibility of youth suicide; Opia feels deeply personal.
There's no real plot to the film—it's more like an accumulation of fragmented moments: scenes that cut between what appear to be flashbacks, shots that capture the excruciating weirdness of having to deal with the outside world after the death of a loved one and intimate philosophical dialogues about the meaning of life between Celia and her lover/best friend randomly interspersed with what seem like hallucinations. But the identity of the victim doesn't become clear until the end, the clues slowly building suspense as the scenes become more and more chaotic and nightmarish.
Opia abandons traditional narrative structure for the sake of what feels like an authentic portrayal of the way suicide can make the world feel like it's turning inside out and upside down. The cinematography ranges from shaky cam to beautiful artistic imagery and helps draw the viewer into the turmoil of the main character's psyche, but you might find your attention wandering as the suspense gets lost in the artistry of the film. Opia could have easily been shorter and still achieved its goal. The ambiguity of the ending feels like a tease after its long buildup, but then again, suicide always leaves more questions than answers. The film is visually beautiful, emotionally provocative and interesting, if you have the patience to make it all the way through.
By Leah Cantor
Santa Fe Independent Film Festival: ‘Why Can’t I Be Me? Around You’ Review
Trailer parks, art cars and the human connection
Directors Harrod Blank and Sjoerd Dijk's newest documentary hits close to home and right in the gut with the unflinching tale of Albuquerque-based trans woman Rusty Tidenberg, an endlessly upbeat and fascinating mechanic, tinkerer, inventor, athlete and intriguing figure handling the aftermath of her transition. Blank and Rusty became friends through the art car circuit, an underground movement of strange and creative cars, including Blank's semi-famous camera-clad van, work on which Rusty performed some years ago and which kicked off a friendship and working relationship that lasts to this day.
Blank takes us from Rusty's childhood hunting and camping with her man's-man father, a real estate developer who laid the foundation for the family-owned trailer park that Rusty manages. We see her at work, but also follow to nearby ski slopes, drag racing competitions, desert dirt biking sessions and appointments with doctors; we get a full look at her existence, learning that she writes poetry and autobiography in her free time, that she's got a little bit of the performance bug; that her father may not understand her transition and keeps his distance.
We learn of Rusty's youthful realization that she was sexually attracted to women, but also envied their breasts, how she came to have her own and why she clings to certain hypermasculine elements of herself. But as the film progresses, we see her phase from being fine with he/him pronouns to preferring she/her. This proves one of the more interesting facets of the film—Rusty is old-school and unfamiliar with the ins and outs of trans terminology, but she knows who she is and learns as she goes, making this maybe one of the best and most candid examples of gender fluidity in film that we've ever seen. Elsewhere, interviews with grizzled mechanic types prove that it's never too difficult to lose the transphobia and that our friends are still our friends no matter how they identify.
Why Can't I Be Me? Around You does meander at times, from Blank's inclusion of himself into the story to scenes that seem to serve no purpose, but its clip meshes well with Rusty's manic behavior and energetic goings-on. We begin to care for her deeply, understanding her loneliness but realizing that it's a price worth paying to live as one's authentic self. This should be required viewing for anyone with questions about trans folx.
By Alex De Vore