MIFF 2004 FILM FESTIVAL NOTEBOOK
By Joel Johnson
DAY 1
My wife has taught me that Friday night is for fluff. She wants light
comedies or romances for her movies on Friday. She doesn’t always get
that—but she wants it. This Friday—the first night of the Maine
International Film Festival—we are able to experience a double-dose of
fluff with Seducing Dr. Lewis and Danny Deckchair.
SEDUCING DOCTOR LEWIS
Canada, 2003; 109 minutes; 35mm; in French with English subtitles.
Seducing Dr. Lewis tells what an economically depressed
Québec fishing community will do to get a factory built in town to replace
the declining fishing industry. The townspeople’s inability to earn an
honest day’s wage undermines their self-esteem, which the film demonstrates in a
flashback that resurrects the now out-of-fashion film cliché of the
après-sex cigarette. One of the prerequisites for the new factory is that
the community have medical care available. Therefore, the doctorless
community needs to recruit a doctor, and because previous efforts have been
unsuccessful, the townspeople know that they must use extraordinary means. Dr. Lewis falls into their clutches when the
former mayor-turned-police-officer catches him speeding. The police officer
apparently arranges to have the young doc sentenced to “community service”
in the community of St. Marie La Mauderne. The new mayor Germain Lesage
(Raymond Bouchard) is determined that no stone shall be left unturned in the
town’s effort to get the doctor to commit to being the town’s doctor for
five years (yes, medicine is practiced much differently in Canada). Forsaking their affinity for hockey and,
especially, Les Canadiens, the
town’s menfolk must feign interest in cricket since Dr. Lewis (David Boutin)
is known to be a cricket fan. A mischievously grinning gnome seems to dispense
petty cash for the doctor’s benefit on the daily walk to where he lives.
This house has been commandeered from the town’s banker Henri (Benoît Brière)
because it is the most modern. A listening post is set up to monitor the
doctor’s phone conversations to gain access to his likes and desires. This
is mined for just about all the comic gold one could possibly extract from
it. Much of the goings-on are borderline silly to just plain silly, but the
film makes no pretense of being more than a good-hearted romp. The
cat-and-mouse game with the doctor is intercut with a similarly underhanded
effort at meeting the other requirements of the company planning to build
the factory. Of course, the mayor ultimately recognizes that he cannot take
advantage of the doctor. He cannot close the deal since it is based solely
on lies. The truth must be told. This film works especially well for about
three-quarters of its running time. It is not quite as adroit as it would
like to be in reaching its conclusion, but by then it has so charmed all but
the most curmudgeonly film viewers that the viewer is rooting for it all to
work. There is a long history of films based on communities banding together
to do something. Part of the fun has been the need to do this with
sleight-of-hand. This has been most prominently displayed in films set in
Britain and Ireland, but the film may most closely resemble a feature-length
pilot episode of a Québec-set Northern Exposure. The town’s ace-in-the-hole
is beautiful Eve (Lucie Laurier), the town’s postmistress, who becomes a
very attractive inducement when the doctor finds himself a bachelor. There
is still a lot of territory for this relationship to explore. I might want
to watch to see how it all develops
Danny Deckchair
Australian, 2003 90 min. 35 mm
1/2
The second film is the Australian comedy Danny Deckchair.
British actor Rhys Ifans plays Danny Morgan who works on a Sydney cement
crew and is looking forward to a camping vacation with his girlfriend Trudy
(Justine Clarke). The vacation falls apart when Trudy would rather show
property as a real estate agent to budding television celebrity Sandy Upman
(Rhys Muldoon) than go on vacation with Danny. She makes up a story about
her boss being called away because of a sick sister. Danny finds out that
the boss has not been called away, and the boss’s version of the story claims the
sick-now-miraculously-recovered sibling was his brother. Danny begins to get
the picture that he and his long-term girlfriend are not quite headed in the
same direction. He decides to experiment with helium-filled balloons
carrying him off in his deckchair. While this is, of course, an odd
undertaking, the film notes early on that Danny has a track record for
coming up with dumb things to do. Danny soon finds himself floating
sheepishly over
Sydney and waving at diners in Sydney’s skyscraper restaurants. Of
course, what goes up must come down. That happens when he runs into a
fireworks display over a place called Clarence and crashes into the yard of
meter maid Glenda Lake (Miranda Otto). She is soon defending him against her
would-be boyfriend Sergeant Dave (Frank Magree) who thinks Danny is an alien
from outer space. She introduces him as a professor she had at college. Soon
he becomes a minor celebrity in Clarence, but that is nothing compared to
the media circus that has broken out in the aftermath of his spectacular
exit from Sydney. Trudy and her equally ambitious newsman friend both try to
exploit their relationship to maximize their fame. Danny, aka “the
Professor,” quickly reenergizes Glenda’s life, making her recall her
fun-loving hippie parents. We never really learn exactly why Glenda is so
dour, but that shouldn’t get in the way too much. Ifans keeps the focus on
Danny’s transformation from a working class stiff to whom no one really pays
much attention into a small-town leader who speaks for the people. Ifans and
Miranda Otto have terrific chemistry. Their chaste Land of Oz is interrupted
when the news media descends en masse on Clarence to reunite the tragically
lost balloon flier Danny Morgan with his “ecstatic” girlfriend Trudy.
Justine Clarke ably fills the role of the ambitious and manipulative Trudy
who keeps her humanity despite her scheming. There’s not a lot of doubt
about how this film is going to end, but it is a delightful ride.
Well, you can tell that it is early in the festival. I am writing in
complete sentences and being able to put them together in fairly long
paragraphs. We’ll see how long that lasts. The festival is off to a nice
start with two admittedly fluff films—but quality fluff films.
Day 2 >>
