THE MAINE INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2004 Diary

By Laurie Meunier Graves

DAY 6

By 9 P.M., the streets of Waterville are dark and empty even though the festival is in full swing. There’s the Electrolux shop, with its cracked glass dotted with little bugs, a Good Housekeeping seal in the upper left-hand corner, and a collection of old torpedo-shaped vacuum cleaners that look as though they are refugees from a better time. The Key Bank sign shines over the wet, quiet streets. Jorgensen’s Café is closed, most of the shops are closed. A few restaurants and a pizza place are all that seem to be open. In the movie Les Francos de Waterville, Norman Boulet says, “Main Street was full of stores. There was plenty to see. Now, there’s nothing left.” This is not strictly true. There are storefronts along Main Street, but what the downtown lacks is vibrancy. It’s not a place where people come and linger anymore. This, of course, can be said of most of the downtowns in Maine, but during the Film Festival, this lack of vitality is especially striking. Where are the cafés for filmgoers to gather after a movie, to have coffee or tea and squabble over what they have seen? I can visualize the streets full of people and the cafés crowded, chairs pulled every which way and the harried staff trying to keep up with the orders. Instead, there is silence and absence and a certain sadness.

Still, the lobby of Railroad Square Cinema is crowded, and people are standing in small groups as they discuss what they have seen. Better yet, there are plenty of opportunities for popcorn and Peace Pops. These things are almost enough to dispel the melancholy of the empty streets. Almost.

GOOD BYE, DRAGON INN
Taiwan, 2003; 82 minutes; 35mm; in Mandarin with English subtitles

1/2

Good bye, Dragon Inn might have been a good movie if the filmmakers had listened to my friend Bob when he stated, “In a movie, things must move.” Yes, indeed, and a little dialogue isn’t a bad idea, either. Instead, what we get is a neither/nor minimalist film with eternally long shots of a very few people eating, walking, cleaning the bathroom, and watching the movie Dragon Inn. We are supposedly seeing the death of a movie theater, done in real time, and this should make us feel sad. But little is said by any of the so-called characters—a woman with a pronounced limp who works at the theater, an odd, young male moviegoer with a sharp face who seems to be looking to have sex with the few other male moviegoers, a little boy, a young woman eating nuts and scattering the hulls on the floor, a rapt older man in a leather coat. The lack of dialogue combined with the lack of plot makes for a cold, remote film, and this movie manages to suck the life out of every scene, even the one with the young man looking for sex. In general, I do not like explicit sex scenes (to me, they are tedious), but in this film I was hoping there would be one. Then, at least something would happen. However, the young man is unsuccessful. Two of the moviegoers turn out to be aging stars who were in Dragon Inn, which judging from the few clips shown, looks far more interesting than this movie. Unfortunately, there is little interaction between the two stars, and, in the end, as one foreign student put it when she watched the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace, “happen nothing.”

PIAF…HER STORY…HER SONGS
USA/France/Canada 2003; 94 minutes; 35mm; in English and in French with English subtitles



If Good Bye Dragon Inn suffers from too little emotion, then Piaf…Her Story…Her Songs suffers from exactly the opposite problem. There is so much exaggerated emotion in this film that it becomes a ridiculous parody of the true thing, and at times I had to bite my lip to keep myself from laughing at the over-the-top performance of Raquel Bitton, who is billed as the “leading interpreter of Piaf’s repertoire.” This documentary shows Bitton performing Piaf’s songs, and in all fairness, I feel compelled to add that many people in the audience were enthralled by Bitton’s performance. In addition, friends told me that the performance really did capture the essence of Piaf’s songs. I will take their word for it.

Along with Bitton’s tears, rolling eyes, and outstretched arms, there are clips of a dinner with Piaf’s old friends, where they tell stories of the French singer, who had a hard life and died young. Like Judy Garland, Piaf falls squarely in the tradition of the doomed artist, a woman of talent who was unable to get her personal demons under control. There are also clips of Bitton, in and out of concert, telling further stories about Piaf, and they really are interesting. In fact, the film would be better if there were more of Piaf and less of Bitton. Although I am not fond of her music, I would like to learn more about Piaf, about whom I know little, but unfortunately, this is not the film for that.

PARALLEL LINES
USA, 2004; 98 minutes; video; in English

1/2

In the documentary Parallel Lines, the filmmaker Nina Davenport, whose apartment once had a view of the World Trade Center, attempts to come to terms with the September 11th attacks, and she does this in a time-honored way for Americans. That is, she takes a road trip. She is working in California when the terrorists strike, and her plan is to drive, rather than fly, to New York. Along the way, she stops to interview people to get their impressions of the event. Leaving in November and wanting to get to New York by New Year’s Eve, Davenport has six weeks to make her trip. It’s just one young woman, her car, and a camera. What emerges is a strange chronicle of people who are on the edge of things, and, at one point, Davenport even admits she is attracted to the lonely and the disconnected, no doubt a reflection of her mood.

Among the many characters she interviews, there is General Bob, a gray-haired old man who is convinced he’s in military intelligence and is running the war in Afghanistan. There is a store clerk whose sons were taken away from her. There is a Korean War veteran who lives in a tent in the woods. An old man who hangs bottles on trees to capture evil sprits. A young pregnant woman whose “boyfriend” is in his sixties. A woman who by luck escaped being killed in the Oklahoma City terrorist attack. A man who shoots rabbits, collects cans and bottles, and manages to make a life for himself. None of these people seem particularly interested in the September 11th attacks and its ramifications. Instead, they are more interested in telling Davenport their personal stories, which are filled with drama and incident. Why people are willing to share such things with a stranger is beyond comprehension, but it most certainly is a reflection of our society, where, with nary a blush, people regularly spill their guts on television. Was it a comfort to Davenport to be away from the constant coverage of 9/11 and focus on people who were more concerned with their own problems than with the problems of the world? Only she can say.

The mood of the film takes a dramatic shift when, at the end of her road trip, she visits Washington, D.C., and is stopped by the police, who tell her it is not normal to be driving a car with a camera mounted on the hood. For the viewer, it is a rather humorous encounter, but I’m sure the reality was different for Davenport, who manages to extricate herself from the situation and leave with her camera in one piece. Finally, she arrives in New York, just in time for New Year’s Eve. It really does seem that in the course of the road trip she comes to terms with 9/11 and makes some kind of peace with a terrible event that signaled a major turning point for the United States as well as for the rest of the world. While I did not gain any insight into September 11th, I was certainly fascinated by the people she interviewed and their extreme self-centeredness. 

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