PERUVIAN CINEMA: CONTRACORRIENTE (UNDERTOW, 2009)—The Evening Class Interview With Javier Fuentes-León

Jesus was a sailor when he walked upon the water / and he spent a long time watching from a lonely wooden tower / and when he knew for certain only drowning men would see him / he said, "All men shall be sailors then until the sea shall free them..."—Leonard Cohen, "Suzanne"

Javier Fuentes-León's Contracorriente (Undertow, 2009) screened in Frameline34's spotlight on South American queer cinema and won that festival's Outstanding First Feature Award, having already scored the World Cinema Audience Award (Drama) at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival. Among its multiple awards and distinctions, Undertow has resonated with audiences in San Sebastian, Cartagena, Miami, Montreal, Nashville, Chicago, Utrecht, Madrid, Provincetown, Slovakia, Galway, Los Angeles, Philadelphia and Vancouver, bespeaking its universal message of love, loss and courageous tolerance. It has since been announced as Peru's Official Submission to the 83rd Academy Awards® for Best Foreign Language Film.

As synopsized at the film's website: "Miguel (Cristian Mercado) is a handsome, young and beloved fisherman in Cabo Blanco, a small fishing village in the Northern coast of Peru, where the community has deep-rooted religious traditions. Miguel is married to the beautiful Mariela (Tatiana Astengo), who is seven months pregnant with their firstborn, but Miguel harbors a scandalous secret: He is having a love affair with another man, Santiago (Manolo Cardona), a painter who is ostracized by the townsfolk for being agnostic and open about his sexuality.

"When Santiago drowns accidentally in the ocean's strong undertow, he cannot pass peacefully to the other side. He returns after his death to ask Miguel to look for his body and bury it according to the rituals of the town. Miguel must choose between sentencing Santiago to eternal torment or doing right by him and, in turn, revealing their relationship to Mariela and the entire village. Miguel is forced to deal with the consequences of his acts and to come to terms with who he really is, even if by doing so he stands the chance of losing the people he loves the most."

After leaving behind his medical career in Peru, Javier Fuentes-León received a scholarship to pursue a Master of Fine Arts degree in film directing at the California Institute of the Arts in Los Angeles. His 1997 short film Rooms was recognized with an award from the National Film Board of Peru and praised as "among the best work done by a Peruvian filmmaker in the 1990s." In 1998, Javier became the head writer for U.S. TV shows on Telemundo, wrote the subtitles of films for major Hollywood studios, and edited commercials and television programs. Undertow is his first full length feature. My thanks to Frameline and Larsen Associates for arranging time for me to sit down with Javier in the Castro Theater's mezzanine to discuss his enchanting queer-inflected ghost story. [This conversation is not for the spoiler-wary!!]

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Michael Guillén: First of all, congratulations on winning the World Cinema Audience Award (Drama) at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival.

Javier Fuentes-León: Thank you.

Guillén: And on having your first feature film picked up for distribution by Wolfe Video. That's quite an achievement for your first venture.

Fuentes-León: It's been amazing. It's what you hope for. When you dream about making a film and then you make the film, you hope somebody will like it and that it will get somewhere. But this has been a lot more than I thought I was going to get.

Guillén: Let's start with the title of your film. Contracorriente is being interpreted as Undertow, but wouldn't a more exact translation be Crosscurrents?

Fuentes-León: It does mean that; but, the funny thing is that I started film in the U.S. at Cal Arts. Before that, I practiced medicine in Peru. So the people who have surrounded me for a long time in the film world are English-speaking. I wrote Undertow in English first and then I translated it into Spanish so the title Undertow was the original title and then—when I was trying to find a title in Spanish that would work—the literal translation of "undertow" into Spanish would have been resaca. The problem with resaca was that in Peru it's a slang term for "hangover", which would have given the film a different meaning. So I had to look for another name in Spanish and Contracorriente seemed like a great name, which—if I'd retitled the film Crosscurrents in English—would have been a great name too; but, I actually like Undertow. Maybe because it was there from the beginning? But also because it has to do with this force that pulls you down. Literally, you have the undertow that drowns Santiago; but, metaphorically, it's a force that pulls Miguel down into hiding and fighting his true nature. Other people have told me they prefer Crosscurrents and they think it fits better.

Guillén: Killian Melloy who writes for the San Franciscan site Edge had an interesting take on it. He felt the alternate title Crosscurrents better served to explain Miguel's conflicted state of mind and the "two distinct motivations [that] are at work on Miguel. He wants to possess Santiago without giving up his wife and infant son; but he also comes to realize that he's only tormenting himself, and Santiago, by refusing to let go."

Fuentes-León: That is an interesting take and confirms why the film is called Contracorriente in Spanish; but, at the end of the day, I liked the metaphor of forces that are in conflict and Undertow speaks to that as well.

Guillén: There are some fascinating conflicting dynamics going on in Undertow. First, you've set your narrative in a conservative fishing village on the Northern coast of Peru so that one would instantly presume—and your narrative specifically addresses this—that there's going to be a high incidence of homophobia that your characters will have to deal with. However, what strikes me as the real danger is not the community's intolerance but Miguel's internalized homophobia. Can you speak to that tension between the external and internal forms of homophobia? I know you've been away from Peru for a while, but how are the attitudes currently towards homosexuality?

Fuentes-León: Although the film is not autobiographical—my life is not at all like Miguel's in the external details: I'm not a fisherman, I've never been married—I have come out as an artist and a gay man. Coming out is every step you take that brings you closer to who you really are; every step that makes you more authentic. The two major steps I've taken have been, first, deciding that practicing medicine was not for me. I knew that if I continued on that path it would take me further away from who I wanted to be. So I decided to change. After I graduated from med school and told myself, "This is not what I really want", I was afraid of the reactions I would receive from everyone around me; but—thank God!—I received a lot of support, not only from my immediate family but my friends, even those who were studying medicine with me. That was a good surprise, knowing that when you take a brave step people around you might actually admire you—even if they don't agree—if that step is honest and courageous and people see that it's something that brings you closer to who you really are. The second step was coming out as a gay man.

But as I was saying, although the film is not autobiographical, a lot of what Miguel is going through is close to how I felt. In response to your question, there are many films like Boys Don't Cry, for example, that focus on external homophobia working against the main character. When I was in the process of first coming out, and especially when I was fighting against being gay and wanting to be like the others, it was tough, especially telling my parents—I could see the pain in their eyes—but, the real enemy was me. I made it way more difficult for myself than anybody else did.

Guillén: Unfortunately, that's the way it usually works.

Fuentes-León: But that's what coming out really is. A lot of people say coming out is when they tell their family, their friends, whoever; but, I don't think that's what coming out is. That's when you announce it. You come out when you accept yourself and when you are at peace within your own skin. I wanted Undertow to be about that and not so much about the community reaction.

Guillén: You chose the seaside town of Cabo Blanco as the location for your film. I understand that your film is meant to be something of a fable with no necessary specificity to its location, let alone any specific reference to time, and this successfully lends a mythopoeic beauty to your film. As someone who has been steeped perhaps one hour too long in Jungian psychology, I couldn't help but recall C.G. Jung's suggestion that a seaside setting (especially in dreams) is where a man gets in touch with his contrasexual nature, his anima.

Fuentes-León: I've never heard of that before.

Guillén: As much as Jung's suggestion speaks to dreams, I feel it likewise speaks to cinema, particularly in your own film where this young man Miguel is coming to terms with his anima (i.e., his "feminine side") through his conflicted feelings of love both for his wife Mariela and his male lover Santiago. Aside from the psychological meaning of the seaside village of Cabo Blanco, I've read interesting reports of the physical filming of Undertow in that fishing village and how the locals reacted not only to the filmmaking process but the film's content. Can you speak to that? Originally, you didn't tell the locals that your film had a gay theme?

Fuentes-León: Not at the beginning, no. We wanted them to cooperate in so many ways and I was afraid that they wouldn't if they knew what the film was about. Cabo Blanco is extremely religious. We didn't actually film Undertow's church scenes in Cabo Blanco's church. We dressed up a bar to serve as the church. Besides, Cabo Blanco's real church was proportionally huge compared to the small size of the town, almost ridiculously so, like: "God is here, boom!" [Laughs.] First, they wouldn't allow us to film in their church. Second, even though it was a real church it was way out of proportion to the town and I didn't feel that was what I wanted. But that's just by way of example of how religion had such a stronghold on this town. My art director would jokingly comment that no one was going to believe that in many places I actually had to bring religious paraphernalia down from the walls—usually art directors create a space by putting things up—but there was so much religious paraphernalia on the walls that we had to bring them down. Again, that tells you how much a Catholic stronghold there was in Cabo Blanco.

We knew that we needed a macho fishing village with a strong Catholic tradition; but, that we were shooting something that a lot of people were not going to be happy about. So at the beginning we decided not to reveal our intentions. When we were asked about the film, we were vague and said, "It's about a fisherman who is married and has a friend that the people in the village don't like and he's trying to show the people in the village that his friend is a nice guy." That satisfied them enough in the beginning. We actually decided to shoot some of the more revealing scenes—like Miguel and Santiago walking down the street holding hands—late in the shooting. I told my assistant director who was handling the shooting schedule that I wanted to shoot that scene towards the end because it was going to be a giveaway. In this town, male friends don't hold hands. But, you know, towards the middle of the shoot the villagers started to figure it out.

Also, at one point a journalist and a photographer arrived from Lima to cover the shooting of the film. On his break, the photographer went to the cantina of that town and—when he was asked what the film was about—he told them the whole story. So they found out.

Guillén: You were busted!

Fuentes-León: [Laughs.] Yes, we were busted basically and we were not happy about it at all, primarily because it didn't come from us. We didn't even know exactly how this photographer related the story because he hadn't even read the script. The next day we had a big shoot with a lot of extras and we were worried that they wouldn't show up now knowing what the film was about. Not all of them came, but many of them came, for the scene that was the big procession at the beginning of the film where we needed a lot of people. I think we underestimated them. Granted, we also brought them a lot of work and boosted their economy while we were there. We also brought attention and glamour to the town. They were grateful for many reasons. If it had not been this glamorous experience, maybe they would have been a little more vocal about how they really felt?

Guillén: Which leads me to ask, precisely because it was such a finite temporary experience for them, do you think that helped them absorb the experience and adjust themselves to it while it was happening? And then they could return to life as normal once you left?

Fuentes-León: Yes, because they could say, "That was them; that was not us."

Guillén: Undertow bears a thematic resemblance to a film that came out of Colombia last year, Oscar Ruiz Nava's El Vuelco del Cangrejo (Crab Trap, 2009); are you familiar with Oscar's film?

Fuentes-León: Yes, of course.

Guillén: Crab Trap plays with the similar premise of an outsider, an urbanite, entering a coastal village, albeit for different motivations. But in both your films this urbanized outsider doesn't quite fit in with the coastal community.

Fuentes-León: Some of the residents of Cabo Blanco did vocalize their concerns that they were worried what people would think about the village and how the film represented them.

Guillén: Speaking of representation, as well you know Undertow has been programmed in Frameline as part of a spotlight on LGBT cinema from South America. Indeed, it is riding the crest of a wave of films from South America with LGBT content currently touring the queer film festival circuit. Do you have a sense of why all of a sudden there is this flourescence of South American film with LGBT content? Are attitudes towards homosexuality changing in South America? There are at least 10 films in Frameline's spotlight coming from Peru, Colombia and Argentina and—though not programmed into Frameline's sidebar—I'm aware of other titles from Venezuela and Uruguay. What's going on?

Fuentes-León: Why films end up being made at the time they're made is a big question mark. I started writing my film, for example, in 2001. The fact that I ended up making it in 2008 such that it timed hitting the festival circuit in 2009 is happenstance. You could say Undertow speaks to who I've been all these years; but, the need to talk about that started in 2001. Also, keep in mind that directors are of all different ages. Enrique Buchichio, the Uruguayan director of Leo's Room (2009) is near my age but I'm not sure of the ages of the other directors. But is there something about my generation that finally now at this age we can talk about being gay and that's why we needed to as filmmakers? You could say that it coincides with the fact that gay civil marriages are now possible in Buenos Aires, in Mexico City.

The same general question could be asked about whether there is a boom in Peruvian cinema since in the same year there have been four Peruvian films that have successfully achieved international visibility: mine; Claudia Llosa with La Teta Asustada (The Milk of Sorrow, 2009); Diego and Daniel Vega with Octubre (October, 2010), which just won a jury prize at Cannes; and Héctor Gálvez with Paraíso (Paradise, 2009), which competed in Venice. In one year Peru has been represented in the four major film festivals in the world, and one of them has been nominated for an Oscar®. Is that coincidence? It's hard to say. To answer your question, I'm hoping that it says something about the need to speak out about gay themes.

Guillén: Fair enough. You say you started writing Undertow in 2001: if, let's say, everything was set up just right and you had been offered the opportunity to film Undertow in 2001, could that have actually happened? Perhaps, like a fine wine, this script had to age?

Fuentes-León: I started writing Undertow in 2001 but the script only got to a mature state in 2005. There were elements I kept adding that changed it. For example, a scene that everyone seems to highlight in the film is where Miguel and Santiago walk through the village holding hands. That was actually the last scene I added to the script a mere two months before we started shooting.

Guillén: Let's talk about this maritime burial ritual portrayed in Undertow. Is this actually practiced in Cabo Blanco?

Fuentes-León: No.

Guillén: Ah, so this is something you have imagined?

Fuentes-León: Yes, it's something I made up.

Guillén: Can you speak to why you valued that image?

Fuentes-León: It's difficult to answer your question because that image has always been there from the beginning. The seed of this whole story came out of an exercise I wrote for a screenwriting class in film school. It was the scene in the kitchen where Santiago shows up for the first time; the only scene where the three main characters are all together. Based on that scene, I wrote a play and in that play was already this idea of the burial ceremony. In that play the love triangle was between the fisherman, his wife, and the village whore (because I wasn't out yet) and it was only later that I realized this story needed to be about the fisherman's affair with another man. But at that time it was a heterosexual love triangle and it had a different tone, a different sensibility. What I mean by that is that the relationship between the fisherman and the whore was more conflicted and vengeful. In that version it was the whore who got drunk while waiting for the fisherman, drowned, and came back from the dead demanding acknowledgment of their love.

Guillén: As it played out in the film, however, I got the sense that it was Miguel who was not letting go of Santiago, rather than the other way around.

Fuentes-León: Exactly. I love how you observe that.

Guillén: And, again, in terms of internalized homophobia, this was Miguel's way of controlling his conflicted feelings for Santiago. In some ways you could say it was almost better for Miguel that Santiago had died and become a ghost because he was invisible to others, which made it more convenient for Miguel.

Fuentes-León: It was definitely more convenient.

Guillén: Which proved to be interesting in Miguel's character arc as he became gradually aware of what exactly he was demanding of Santiago. So let's turn to Santiago's death by drowning. I'm quite fond of magical realist flourishes in literature and film and am often struck by how magical realism provides narrative traction in Latin American cinema. You have used it quite delicately in Undertow. I didn't even fully realize Santiago had drowned at first and that his subsequent appearances were spectral. Can you speak to why you preferred to visualize his death with such a light touch of magical realism?

Fuentes-León: There were a couple of decisions that took me in that direction. Originally I had written a scene which showed Santiago drinking, wading into the ocean, being caught in the undertow, crushed against the rocks and drowning. Production-wise, however, that would have been hell, especially with my small budget. For practical considerations, I needed to consider whether I really needed to shoot a scene that would be hell to shoot, cost a lot of money, possibly even be dangerous. Perhaps I could have found a creative way to film it and reduce the risk; but, the fact that I had to face these production issues made me question whether I truly needed to show the scene to further the narrative? Then I realized that I was telling the story from Miguel's point of view and that—since we are seeing through his eyes—we shouldn't know that Santiago has drowned and should, instead, feel Miguel's confusion.

Guillén: Your introduction of Santiago's death by cinematic elision, though momentarily confusing, worked for me because it effectively served to thin the membrane between life and death. That inbetween realm between life and death is such a mysterious region that any effort on your part to try to depict it or explain it too literally would have been foolhardy. There was something honest in Miguel's confusion and the audience's participation in that confusion. I found how you handled it quite effective.

Fuentes-León: I'm glad, because some people have actually asked me at the end of the film: "Did Santiago die?" They thought he was still alive. Perhaps that confusion is the price I have to pay for not literally depicting his drowning?

Guillén: But to phrase that as "the price you have to pay" is akin to criticizing the poetry of your film. You can't criticize poetry. It either speaks to you or doesn't.

Fuentes-León: I agree with you. I haven't thought about it the way you put it, but this fine line between life and death is hard to picture or imagine, and especially to film.

Guillén: In your Newfest interview with Evans Forlidas, you stated: "I've always liked the idea of having two people symbolize different, complementary aspects of the ideal lover." Do you remember saying that?

Fuentes-León: Absolutely not! [Laughs.]

Guillén: Well, it's a beautiful statement and plays into the erotic triangulation that you first of all configured as a heterosexual triangle but which then matured into Undertow's bisexual triangle. What is it about that erotic triangulation that speaks to you as a filmmaker?

Fuentes-León: Wow. What a question!

Guillén: I'm sorry, I'm just the type of person that needs to know such things.

Fuentes-León: No, no, it's fine. I think an interest in erotic triangulations is very human. I made that statement in response to Evans Forlidas' own reference to Bruno Barreto's Brazilian comedy Doña Flor and Her Two Husbands (1976). Are you familiar with that film?

Guillén: Yes, it's a favorite.

Fuentes-León: The two men in that film are particularly different, to the point that they are stereotypically different. One is the Casanova lover wild card and the other is stable but boring. I find it a romantic idea that you will find the perfect person who will embody everything you want and everything you need. That sentiment works beautifully for literature....

Guillén: But it's damn hard to find!

Fuentes-León: More, it's damn hard to be! I don't think I could be the perfect anything for anybody. The romantic resolution would be to accept the fantasy that two people could do that.

Guillén: Would you say that this is the gay male equivalent of the well-known fantasy of the madonna-whore dyad entertained by most straight males?

Fuentes-León: [Chuckling] Yes!

Guillén: Returning to the narrative domain of magical realism, which is so strong in Latin America and often the means by which socio-political truths can be articulated. Recently I asked Miguel Littin—and I pose the same question to you—what is it about the particular strain of Latin American magical realism that furthers the articulation of socio-political issues? You wanted to make a sociological point in Undertow and you made that point through a poetic and fantastic metaphysic. Why does magical realism allow that to work?

Fuentes-León: Because magical realism allows our discourse to transcend its limitations. Without elements of magical realism in my film, Undertow would be more of a kitchen sink drama. The elements of death and fantasy help the film transcend the reality of these three people. Even in cultures like the U.S. that are removed from such things, Latin American folk tales have magic. When we were kids we were told tales that included magic. By incorporating magical realism into my film it helps achieve a connection to that core oral tradition which many of us come from and allows the film to transcend its realistic limitations.

Guillén: I would add that magical realism also introduces a serviceable morality without hitting audiences over the head. I would suggest that one of the reasons Undertow is so popular among audiences is because you have the good instinct not to make the film too specific; i.e., too ideologic. From what I understand, Undertow is appealing to audiences all across the board: gay, straight, male, female, young, old and I presume that's because its story is more fable than fact.

Fuentes-León: It also follows classic Greek outlines: you have a protagonist-hero and his antagonist, which in this case you could say is both one and the same person in Miguel. Or, you could say Santiago is Miguel's mentor; but, he's also Miguel's antagonist. Or Mariela could be the antagonist. All the basic elements of a Greek tale are there, which—once again—is mythical, mystical; but, believe me, I don't look for it. When I get excited with an idea, somehow it has magic in it or at least a bit of an off element that allows me to jump out of the plain reality in which we usually live.

Guillén: I favor films that tell their stories through images. I mean, I don't mind being told a story; but, I prefer the images to hold the story. In your film, let's say, I loved the image of the candle that lights itself. No matter what your particular attitude might be—whether you identify with the wife who wants to be rid of the candle because it reminds her of Miguel's love for Santiago, or whatever—the point remains that candle is going to stay lit. I'm not sure I can explain to you the feeling I received from that image of the candle that lights itself or stays perpetually lit, but as an image it holds resonant meanings.

Fuentes-León: I discovered as I was writing the script what the candle would be. I didn't know at the beginning that it was going to become a recurrent symbol. At the beginning it was more like, "Okay, I think it would be cool if Santiago gives Mariela something."

Guillén: As a little props detail, was it difficult finding that candle? How did you know you had the right candle?

Fuentes-León: I went with the art director to a market in Lima where that style of candle is very Peruvian and you find them everywhere. They're colorful and decorated with golden or silver carvings. At first, we had decided upon a blue candle because we wanted blue objects to represent the ocean. For example, the wall of Miguel's living room is blue. But when we found the purple candle—and that was actually the color of the candle written in the script—we felt it was right. In Peru, purple is a color also associated with religious processions in Lima of the purple Christ, which happens in October. Purple is a color that is instantly recognized in Lima or throughout Peru as a religious color. So when we went to this market, we decided we wanted a candle that had both blue and purple and we asked them if they could make us 10 of them, which they did.

Guillén: I'm not sure if you know this but within the tradition of the Americas—certainly among the Mayan culture—the color purple, the actual pigment, came from sea snails and thus your candle has this ancient connection with the sea.

Fuentes-León: Really?! Wow. Thank you. I should have you be beside me each time I talk about my film; you'll make me look smart.

Guillén: [Laughs.] You trust your own instincts. So, returning to your imagery, you have these recurring images which for me are like the bass beats of jazz and which often hold conflicting meanings, and you depict that thin membrane between life and death that we discussed earlier, and yet another fantastical device you use in your film are your temporal displacements. In Undertow, you don't really let us know where anything is specifically happening or when anything is specifically happening. You get a sense it's current, but that it's in the recent past or possibly even in the near future. What are you playing with there? It's a fantastic sense of time but it's close at hand, it's intimate.

Fuentes-León: Once again, I think all those fantastic elements that you lay out fit within this fable. I wanted to create the feeling that this is a story that has been happening for centuries; but, at the same time, it could be the story that your son or your daughter would tell you tomorrow. I wanted Undertow to be one of the constant stories of humanity.

Guillén: Having explored these magical realist elements, let's now get down to earth and current. You might know that there has been a recent debate over whether gay actors can play straight roles as competently as straight actors can play gay roles?

Fuentes-León: Ah yes, the thrash about Promises, Promises?

Guillén: Exactly. Ramin Satoodeh—in a serious lapse of judgment—wrote a lightning-rod column for Newsweek arguing that gay actors could not effectively play straight romantic leads. It's nearly an equal cliché that straight actors can insure an Oscar® nod or win playing a gay role. But not so much attention is given to why gay actors are not offered those substantial gay roles that earn straight actors their statuettes? Not to put you on the spot; but, within the acting pool in Peru, was there not a single gay actor who could have played the role of Santiago?

Fuentes-León: Of the actors that I auditioned in Peru and Colombia, there were a couple that were gay and—to be honest—I would not have said no to their being cast, especially one well-known Peruvian actor who has recently come out (though, actually, he was outed). But the reason I didn't cast him—and I hope that if you publish this it doesn't hurt his feelings—was because what I needed from the character of Santiago was an angel of joy. I needed the audience to fall in love with Santiago. I was thinking particularly of the straight audience I was hoping to reach. I didn't want Santiago to be seen as the seducer who breaks up somebody's home. I've had a lot of straight friends tell me that one of the reasons they didn't like Brokeback Mountain was because they felt Jake Gyllenhaal's character was the seducer, the snake. I never felt that watching Brokeback Mountain but I could see how my straight friends blamed him. So I wanted to make sure that in Undertow Santiago would not be seen that way. This gay Peruvian actor that I mentioned who was interested in playing the role of Santiago would have brought a lot of pathos to the role but not the angelic charisma the character required.

Guillén: Fascinating. Thank you for your candor. Though I understand your decision to cast Manolo Cardona as Santiago—he, indeed, has angelic charisma to spare—I'm still intrigued that as a director you felt this need to cater to the requirements of an audience that would grant more credence to a straight actor playing that gay angel than they would to a gay actor playing that gay angel.

Fuentes-León: To be completely honest, I was looking for the best actor to play Santiago and I was looking for a necessary chemistry between the two actors.

Guillén: Don't misunderstand me, your casting works. And, again, similar to Crab Trap, the urban intruder is a white Colombiano who you might not have even thought was Colombian by contrast to the darker residents of that coastal village. You achieve somewhat the same effect in Undertow. Manolo is fair, blue-eyed, and somewhat opposite physically to Cristian, which speaks to opposites attracting, I guess.

Fuentes-León: But that's also the spectre of Latin America.

Guillén: Researching your film, I appreciated one of Manolo's comments to you. When I read about straight actors playing gay roles there's invariably the boilerplate expression of discomfort in having to fulfill the intimate physicality required of such roles and how they're challenged as actors to overcome it, blah blah blah, but I appreciated that Manolo told you he would have no problem with the gay sexuality if your focus would be on the love between the two men. That then got me wondering if two gay actors playing those roles wouldn't overemphasize the sexual as an expression of that love? That's nearly as hazardous an equation as Ramin Satoodeh's; but, it did cross my mind.

Fuentes-León: I would hope not. I was in complete agreement with Manolo. I needed the love between the two men to be the main thing. It hasn't happened yet—but, maybe it will happen—that some gay people will criticize the movie for not being more sexual. Some folks have mentioned that the sex scenes between Miguel and Mariela are more explicit....

Guillén: But you've staged that, you've explained it, there's a reason for that intensity: Miguel is trying to prove his challenged masculinity.

Fuentes-León: Exactly. But I guess what I'm trying to say is that—whether it would have been Manolo or somebody else—I knew that the love between these two men is what I wanted to show. That is what needed to be communicated. Otherwise, the film would not work. It would not be a love story. It would be more a story of passion.

Guillén: When I first saw Undertow, I wasn't sure if it was a romantic ghost story or if it was a tale of conscience that had romantic elements. I've come to feel that Undertow really isn't a ghost story; it's actually about Miguel's crisis of conscience. It's about how he has to muster the courage to face his love for Santiago within himself and then to acknowledge their love in front of the community by way of the burial ritual. This reminded me of Lino Brocka's You Have Been Weighed and Found Wanting (1974).

Fuentes-León: What a great title!

Guillén: Isn't it? Perhaps one of the best. It's taken from a passage in the Bible. It's a film about the necessary confrontation between the individual and the community—where the conscience of a community is stared down by the conscience of the individual—and where the first act of integrity is to square off against an inauthentic community. It's final sequence rhymes with your's.

Fuentes-León: I love that you say that because Undertow is disguised as a ghost story and if people want to stay there, that's fine; but, I really wanted it to be about Miguel's conscience and his struggle. The ghost of Santiago is the representation of that struggle and—as I mentioned earlier—Miguel's mentor. Once Miguel gains his integrity, he has to externalize it. He can't keep it inside himself.

Guillén: This is a somewhat unfair question because I'm not sure it is fair to ask a filmmaker to continue on past their own framed narrative, but what do you think will happen to the relationship between Miguel and Mariela? Will they get back together?

Fuentes-León: I think that he will try to gain Mariela back. He says to his son, "I promise. I will see you soon." He does love her and he definitely wants to be a father. When he says to Mariela, "This is the last thing. I need to do this. In five years, neither of us will forget and—even though he might be gone forever—he will still be a ghost between us." He needed to honor Santiago's memory and put it to peace. I don't believe Miguel will become the kind of man who moves to the city and becomes an active homosexual. When people ask me, "What is Miguel? Is he bisexual? Is he gay?", I realize that one of the reasons I set the film in a rural area is because it's unlike a city where people are swamped and surrounded by labels. Especially in a country like the U.S., labels identify people: you are either a Republican or a Democrat, gay or straight or bisexual, vegetarian or a meat-eater....

Guillén: I call that the process of being hemmed in by lexical imperatives. You move to a city and you have to affiliate yourself with defined identities. I've lived in San Francisco my entire adult life and have constantly struggled with the term "gay" because, for starters, I'm consciously abstinent and have been for quite a while now so I'm no longer sexual and am not sure if I satisfy the term "homosexual" and also I feel the term "gay" has a specific historicity and applies to a particular time and politic. Its usage now is more a reference to a commodified lifestyle. So I'm not exactly sure what I am anymore; but, I have also stopped being as concerned.

Fuentes-León: Which, again, is why I set Undertow in a rural location to undermine that urban compulsion with self-identifying through labels. Rural towns in Peru are not obsessed with labels in the same way. Men do have sex with other men and they honestly do not perceive themselves as gay. Granted, that's also because society doesn't allow them to; but, I guess what I'm trying to say with this roundabout answer, is that I don't think Miguel is going to end up at the YMCA in love with Judy Garland. He'll go back to Mariela. The question is whether Mariela will take him back?

Guillén: I have a sense she will. I believe she will forgive him. My final question then revolves around the film's ending sequence where Miguel commits Santiago's body to the sea. Though with evident reluctance, the community nonetheless participates in the ritual and they don't leave Miguel to do it alone. What that made me consider is that—although the village is admittedly Catholicized and the Catholic religion stands in judgment of homosexuality—memory in and of itself serves a deeper religious impulse than institutionalized Catholicism and it is the communal participation in that religiosity of memory that ultimately unites and heals the community.

Fuentes-León: Not all the village honors the ritual and those that follow Miguel are the young, which was my way of saying that it is the youth of Latin America that will bring about change. They are bringing it. My generation, my friends (including myself) all came out in our late twenties, some haven't come out until their thirties, but I see young people in their late teens and early twenties who are already out, even in countries like Peru. Enough to provide a sense of hope that youth will bring about change.

Guillén: To wrap up here then, let's talk about your future projects. I understand you want to do a film noir piece and a rock musical? Can you talk about those?

Fuentes-León: Yeah! Actually, I have three projects I'm working on. There's a love story again with magical realist elements, this time between a man and a woman. It's about a woman who cannot go into the sunlight because she burns. The story is about a man who has been shot out of a cannon and has crashed through her roof three hours before dawn, leaving a gaping hole in her roof that will let in sunshine that will kill her. Of course, that's where the love story starts. That's actually the first story I ever wrote when I was applying to film school, when I was still practicing medicine. It was a one-act play I wrote that I've turned into a script for a feature film. I actually wrote the first draft of the script before I wrote Undertow; but, it's a bigger film, and Undertow was also a story I needed to tell first.

Guillén: Does it have a working title?

Fuentes-León: Yes, The Woman Who Feared the Sun. Basically in the love story of The Woman Who Feared the Sun, it is through her love that she's finally able to go into the sunlight and actually live her life so—like Undertow—it's a coming out story but a metaphorical one.

The rock musical is called Sinister, which in Latin means "left" but also means evil and menacing, whereas the right is associated with good.

Guillén: This is why I don't trust left-handed people.

Fuentes-León: I am left-handed!!

Guillén: I'm joking.

Fuentes-León: Sinister is basically a Romeo and Juliet kind of story; but, it's set in Suburbia, U.S.A. but at a time when—for some reason—left-handed people are considered bad, aligned with the Devil, and ghettoized in order to be reformed. So the rock musical happens in this ghetto where left-handed people are being reformed and it's a love story between a right-handed boy and a left-handed girl when such a love is not allowed.

Guillén: Are you a musician? You write music?

Fuentes-León: Yes. We haven't really formed a band yet, but I've been writing music with a friend of mine for a long time and I've written pieces on my own that are more like modern rock; but, the songs that I'm saving for the musical are songs that don't really fit with what we want our band to be. They're more earnest and stage-oriented. Sinister is the project I'm most excited about but I feel that I need a little more experience to do it justice.

Clearly, I'm using left-handedness as a metaphor because, first of all, we don't really know how people become left-handed—it's somehow genetic but we haven't found the gene—and nowadays we would find it ridiculous that someone would be discriminated against for being left-handed. But in the ancient past left-handed people were burned alive as witches and even within the time of my grandparents and parents, left-handed children had their left hands tied up so that they would be forced to use their right hands and they were hit if they used their left hands. So just as nowadays we would find it ridiculous for someone to discriminate against the left-handed, hopefully in the future it will be ridiculous for people to discriminate against those who are gay. These are things over which people cannot choose.

09/28/10 UPDATE: Per David Hudson, Raphael Minder on Undertow for The New York Times. I like how Minder characterizes the film's "nonlocal dimension."

Cross-published on Twitch.

MEMBER OF THE SAN FRANCISCO FILM CRITICS CIRCLE!

What fun!! I've just been accepted into the San Francisco Film Critics Circle (SFFCC) and couldn't be more honored. What an opportunity to hone my craft under the guidance of those more accomplished than myself. I'm already salivating to receive my first batch of studio screeners!

Cross-published on Twitch.

BURIED (2010)—Peter Galvin's Review

If you're a director searching for a low-cost solution to filmmaking, what could be better than limiting your film to one actor and one location? Of course, eschewing the bells and whistles of modern cinema means you better have a pretty fantastic script to back it up: it has to be entertaining simply through its storytelling. Director Rodrigo Cortés has hit the jackpot with Buried, a film with a story so stark it could almost be a play.

Paul Conroy (Ryan Reynolds) wakes up in darkness. He flicks on his Zippo lighter and finds that he is inside a coffin, under the ground. An American truck driver delivering supplies in Iraq, the last thing Paul remembers is his truck being attacked by a group of Iraqis with automatic rifles, and now he's here. His phone rings—except it's not his phone, it has Arabic text and terrible reception—but he does what anyone in the situation would do: he starts making calls. But between the bad reception, being put on hold and getting answering machines—the things that tick you and me off in everyday life—have become the difference between life and death for Paul.

I hesitate to reveal any further twists, but be assured that the suspense moves quickly and organically. Cortés builds layers of ticking bombs—the phone's battery life, the oxygen level in the coffin, etc.—and by the end the tension has ratcheted to near-unbearable levels. The inherent claustrophobic nature of the coffin itself is enhanced by the seemingly infinite threat of darkness that wraps around Reynolds' body, licking menacingly at him with shadows created by the Zippo.

Reynolds himself was something of a revelation to me; I suppose I haven't been paying enough attention to his transformation into a thoroughly fine actor. I've seen a number of his films, but here he plays Paul as a believable everyman who finds himself caught up in the bureaucracy of war, and that comedic timing he's known for is a godsend in easing just enough of the tension to allow it to continue to build. But it's in the moments where Paul's frustrations reach their limit that I found Reynolds most relatable. He's asked to single-handedly carry the film and it's a pleasure to see that his charmingly one-note performance from Van Wilder will not define him forever.

It remains to be seen whether Buried can break out of the "indie" box in which it finds itself (pun noted, but not intended). Although releasing through horror giant Lionsgate, the single-location novelty is a double-edged sword for a broader public, who may find the phone calls repetitive and action-less, and be disappointed not to see more of Reynolds' comedy or a big action scene. The film is comparatively small when stacked next to something like a Saw sequel, but it is definitely not an experimental work and its aspirations lie squarely in the realm of entertainment.

Buried is the epitome of a good idea well-actualized. Variations on the story have been done but here the focus is solely the man and the coffin, and never straying from that core focus is a bold move. "Hitchcockian" is a term bandied about far too freely these days, but I do think it's the sort of film that the master of unyielding suspense would love. Buried certainly would have made a damn fine episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents.

Cross-published on Ornery-Crosby and Twitch.

TIFF 2010: THE POLL DIARIES (2010)—The Evening Class Interview With Chris Kraus

Chris Kraus was born in Goettingen, Germany and studied at the German Film and Television Academy (DFFB) in Berlin, where he now teaches. Already a noted scriptwriter before making his debut as a director, Kraus scored a notable success with his first feature, Scherbentanz (Shattered Glass, 2002), which was awarded two Bavarian Film Prizes, among other awards. His second film, Vier Minuten (Four Minutes, 2006), was one of the most successful German films of past years and won over 50 German and international awards, including the Audience Prize at San Francisco's 2007 Frameline Film Festival. In The Poll Diaries (2010), Kraus continues his tradition of introducing sensational young talents to the movie-going public: after Hannah Herzsprung in Four Minutes, it is now the turn of Paula Beer who plays Oda von Siering, the adolescent protagonist of The Poll Diaries, which boasted its world premiere at TIFF 2010: "On the eve of World War I, a 14-year-old German girl returns to her home on the Baltic coast, a place uneasily shared by Germans, Russians and Estonians. While her morbid scientist father controls the family with a cruel hand, the passionate young girl secretly nurses a wounded Estonian anarchist back to health—an act of curiosity and then of defiance that could set off an uncontrollable chain reaction."

My thanks to Stephen Lan for arranging for Chris Kraus and I to sit down to discuss his latest project and to Sebastian Keismueller of Bavaria Film International for access to the film's production stills, including Jim Rakete's portrait of Kraus.

* * *

Michael Guillén: You have been working on The Poll Diaries (2010) for close to 14-15 years: from the original idea, through development and pre-production, to the actual filming. That's an unusually excessive amount of time to be working on a project and—since people change over time....

Chris Kraus: Yes, that's true.

Guillén: ...how was that for you? Did your approach to the project change over the years, as I assume you changed? Can you speak to the pros and cons of having such a length of time to develop a film?

Kraus: I like this question, I must say. I never thought about it but it's true. In 1995, I wrote the script because in 1993—shortly after the freedom of Estonia—I traveled to Estonia and visited Poll. The story went through an interesting process because at the beginning I just wanted to give the script to another director. After a while, I became a director and—after all my efforts to bring the script to another director fell through—suddenly the possibility developed that I could work on it myself.

At that point the script itself went a little bit darker. Over time it became darker. That was the process. At the beginning, it was a story about a girl's adventure where at the end the anarchist escapes and she grows up; it was a coming-of-age story. Nothing really changed except the community in which the story was set. By the time I decided to direct the story myself, it had darkened, there was more tragedy, more pain. In retrospect, I'm glad that this film wasn't made when I was a young guy because now it's filled up with the ambivalency of being neither good nor bad, which is a theme of interest to me. Also, the idea of how luck can bring a person to the right decision and not the wrong. Allowing the script to mature to incorporate my personal interests was better for the project.

Guillén: This tragic shadow that fell over the script over time, was it truer to the source memoirs of German-Baltic author Oda Schaefer (1900-1988)? Or were these tragic concerns more in league with your own personal development?

Kraus: Yes, absolutely, because when I began writing the script based on Oda Schaefer's memoirs, I felt that there was something wrong with this woman's story, like something was missing. I felt something had happened that she hadn't included in her memoirs. So I decided to create the world that she never talked about in her memoirs. Admittedly, my creation of Oda's world was incorrect—Poll was never destroyed and some of the information at the end of the film is incorrect—but, I wanted to play with this balance between fiction and non-fiction. Though the character of Oda Schaefer is real—she was a famous lyric writer in the 1950s—she is almost unknown today, though she remains real for my family. During her time at Poll, Oda Schaefer discovered her own identity. So perhaps it's safe to say that the way of her story and the way of my own story are not so far away from each other.

Guillén: That you both became writers surfaces as a common element? I'm aware you studied literature at the university, but what prompted the shift to scriptwriting? At what point did you choose film over literature?

Kraus: There's not a direct link. Yes, I started at the university studying two years of literature; but, then I did a lot of other things, my life was mixed up, I stopped my studies, and only ten years later was lucky enough to study four years at a film school. To make a long story short, I decided to be a writer because I came from a background of writing. In those days at the film school everyone wanted to become a director. I never wanted to become a director. I had children I had to feed.

Guillén: Well, I'm glad to say you became a director, I'll put it that way.

Kraus: You're very charming.

Guillén: In your director's statement in the press notes, you state: "I wasn't interested in a world of the past, but in the onset of a period that we live in to this very day." Can you expand on that? What are the characteristics of this period we now live in that were introduced by the historical precedent of your story?

Kraus: I'm not sure. Your questions are very complex and with my limited English I'm not sure I can be on the same level; but, I'll try. I don't believe the connections are details of time. It's more a feeling of insecurity that has been passed down to us from that time. Further, the changes in time from then to now are not as big as we think. On one hand, when we think of 1914 it seems almost the same as considering the ancient Romans—it seems so far away—but, on the other hand, all of the emblematic characteristics of the 20th century were already there in 1914: science, the cars, the beginning of psychology, all of those aspects of modernity were already in place. What I meant in my director's note was that 1914 was just the beginning of a modern age that we experience moreoreless today.

Guillén: To return to your earlier comment regarding your concern with the ambivalency of right and wrong and how seemingly straightforward events can lead to right or wrong decisions, what I found difficult to watch in The Poll Diaries was the characterization of Oda's father Ebbo von Siering (in a disturbing performance by Edgar Selge). Here is a man desperate to be acknowledged within a mainstream academic community who begins to scientifically experiment on human beings, which—historically, of course—we know led to the heinous practices that occurred during WWII. But it comments even further on the genetic splicing being explored today. That scientific impulse of experimenting with the human body, once started, has never stopped and I was wondering if this was the "onset of a period" that you were referencing? Or as Cameron Bailey phrased it in his program notes: "Posing a range of ethical questions, the film offers a compelling commentary on a morally bankrupt brand of reasoning that would come to underlie some of the greatest tragedies of the twentieth century."

Kraus: I wanted to choose one part of the early turn of the century that would tell us about ourselves today. I chose science. I could have chosen other things as well. I could have chosen psychology, for example. The real existing Ebbo on whom my character was based was actually a journalist and—though he began his writing career with some interesting pieces—he was eventually unsuccessful as a writer. Filled with hate and resentment over his failed career, he became anti-Semitic. I gave that lack of success to my character Ebbo as well to show how he became more and more radical and extreme. When a man is not successful in life, he feels pressured and begins to resent and hate the times that work against him. I chose science as a way to articulate this theme of conflicted modernity. As a filmmaker, of course, you choose what will allow the most imagery and I felt I could do more with Ebbo as a scientist than I could if he were a journalist.

Guillén: One of the things I found most compelling about The Poll Diaries was precisely your directorial intent to create a historical drama that speaks to modern audiences. I'm continually intrigued by what makes such a historical drama contemporary. Do you feel The Poll Diaries is a contemporary film?

Kraus: It's hard for me to answer that; but, I think the characters are modern. Do you know what I mean? It's like trying to imagine what it would be like to live in the 16th Century or—in the specific case of The Poll Diaries—the transition from the 19th to the 20th Century. For me, as a German, with a family background in National Socialism, what I imagine as modern is what it would feel like for me to be this adolescent girl Oda? Although I never met her, I liked her a lot. It was forbidden to talk about her in my family.

Guillén: Oda Schaefer was your great aunt?

Kraus: Yes, she was my great aunt and—because of that—that's the modern connection. The same family dynamics occurring during Oda's adolescence in 1914 are the same dynamics occurring in my family today. I'm pretty sure my family doesn't like my film.

Guillén: I was going to ask you how they felt about your championing the black sheep of your family.

Kraus: No, no, no, they are absolutely against this film.

Guillén: They didn't want anyone to know about her, right?

Kraus: No, that's not exactly right. They're not really interested in her; but, they're interested in the status of her own tradition and because I show a German-Baltic who is a bad guy doing bad things to people. Actually, I don't think of him as a bad guy. He's an ambivalent personality. Maybe he could have been a good guy?

Guillén: If he'd been academically successful?

Kraus: Maybe? Or maybe Oda could have turned out to be a bad girl? Because I've staged that ambivalency, my family is totally against this film. I'm sure no one in my family could have imagined this, coming from an aristrocratic background with its tradition of pride. But to return to your question: this is the modern thing. This is what's contemporary about the film. The attitudes of my family. We even tried to work with German-Baltic organizations but it wasn't possible. They read a small treatment of the script and rejected participation. That reaction alone tells me that there is something in this story that is not just a fairy tale.

Guillén: At a large international festival like TIFF where I'm watching so many different movies from different countries—which is such a compressed, almost artificial way to watch movies—one of the welcome delights is how certain movies begin to speak to each other. Your film The Poll Diaries speaks to two others I've seen at TIFF: Lee Changdong's Korean feature Poetry and Aleksei Fedorchenko's Russian feature Silent Souls. All three films concern individuals who—in their struggle against social constraints and personal tragedies—become poets. And though all three films are stylistically different, it's through the tragedies of their individual lives that their poetry emerges. In The Poll Diaries Oda is encouraged to become a poet through the influence of the Estonian anarchist "Schnaps" (handsomely played by Tambet Tuisk). Is this one of the fictional elements you added to the life of your great aunt Oda Schaefer?

Kraus: I thought about the character of my great aunt and wondered why she was not like the rest of the family? The answer is: because she became a writer. When you're a writer, you're never sure of the conditions of living and have to live with a certain insecurity. You have to be content to ask and perhaps not know the answers. When you begin to ask questions, when you begin to think about things, perhaps at the end of your questioning there will be no answer; but, because of all the questions you have asked, you maybe learn who you are. If you're a slave to family traditions, you will never find yourself. Speaking personally, that's the tragedy of my own family. So many members of my family have been so far away from themselves; but, my great aunt Oda tried to find herself. She spoke honestly of her feelings and that made a difference. That's also what interests me in other people.

Guillén: The Poll Diaries is sumptuously filmed. It's visually beautiful. The entire production design is stunning. I was bemused reading the production notes that most of your production team is female.

Kraus: [Laughs loudly.]

Guillén: Your director of photography Daniela Knapp, your production designer Silke Buhr, your make up supervisor Susana Sánchez, your costume designer Gioia Raspé, your editor Uta Schmidt, your original music by Annette Focks, your casting director Nina Haun, even your producers Meike and Alexandra Kordes: all women. This is somewhat unusual and commendable. I respect this. What was this like for you to be surrounded by such an ensemble of feminine creative talent informing the film?

Kraus: I like to work with women! They add another sensitivity. The truth is that most of my team began with my career. We have grown together. It just happened.

Guillén: I appreciate that you use the term "sensitivity" because the voice that comes out of this film, this young girl's voice, is a strong, feminist voice. The role you have given Paula Beer to play possesses admirable agency. It's a great debut performance for a young actress. I'm curious if the fact that you have such creative women working with you has helped develop and strengthen that feminine voice, not only here in The Poll Diaries but with your previous feature Four Minutes?

Kraus: It's just the way my life happened. When I began with my first film Scherbentanz (Shattered Glass, 2002), it wasn't that I said, "I only want to work with women." It just happened. I've planned a trilogy of films about my family. Scherbentanz was about my mother and The Poll Diaries about another female character. I think today that's very modern. Female characters now are more interesting because today they can do things; they're not victims anymore.

Guillén: Which reflects the central theme you're admittedly interested in of how an individual can find him or herself against all odds and despite opposition from the social environment.

Kraus: Yes. For men, of course, in our male world, it's normal; but, for women it's a challenge. Even for a woman to become a cinematographer is a challenge. Your question reveals to me that this is a theme in my work and I apologize for laughing so loudly. Why did you look at that? Why did you check that out?

Guillén: Because I personally relate to that feminine struggle for independent agency. I am one of those men who believe that the emancipation of women sets us all free. And I've met enough people in the film world to know how difficult it is for women to get a toehold in the industry; thus, I admired your production ensemble, which has served you well. Four Minutes was internationally successful.

Kraus: Yes. I see.

Guillén: Returning to the production, this house that serves as the main location in your film, this incredible Palladine-style manor, is an incredible presence in your film. As Cameron Bailey described it in his program notes, it's "a character in its own right, a hulking, neoclassical manor that hovers on stilts above the sea." Can you speak to how you and your production team came up with this structure?

Kraus: The decision to build that house was mine. It was the only possibility to bring it alive. Even though at first we looked for an existing structure in Estonia. But the details of the house, its construction, was the work of Silke Buhr.

Guillén: Who, again, worked with you on Four Minutes, as well as on Florian Henckel von Donnersmarcks's The Lives Of Others. This house that Buhr designed, I'd never seen a house like this before.

Kraus: That's because it doesn't exist.

Guillén: So it was more an aesthetic concept rather than an architectural reconstruction of a historical structure?

Kraus: It has more to do with imagination. It's a house that could have existed. We thought about how we could bring it alive and it depended upon a character who could imagine such a house. A king in the 16th century, let's say, might say, "I want a mosque as a house" and he would have it built. Silke Buhr and I thought, "Okay, 100 years ago there might have been a grandfather in Alaska who wanted to bring a Palladine-style manor to Alaska." We decided that—though such a structure didn't exist—it could exist, especially if we had a character such as Ebbo von Siering who was crazy enough to build it. Thus, this somewhat fairy tale house came alive. I heard today, in fact, that some people found it admirable that we had found the house in Estonia!

Guillén: Speaking of Estonia, what was it like to film there? The Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival has become one of my dream destinations. I've heard their cities hold the old world charm of Prague? Was it a special experience for you to film there?

Kraus: Yes, it was a special experience; like filming here in the wilderness of Canada. We filmed in a nature reserve away from civilization. I haven't seen much of Estonia. I've mainly just seen its forests. When we filmed from the helicopter, it was amazing to see nothing but wilderness as far as the eye could see. This is uncommon for middle Europe so I was delighted to use this footage. For me, Estonia was archaic. That would be the word: archaic.

Unfortunately, with regard to the old world charm of Tallinn, they have polished it up. It's too new now. It's very nice; but, when I saw it in 1993, everything was wonderfully wrecked.

Guillén: It had character?

Kraus: Unbelievable character. It was like stepping back into the past 100 years. But it's not like that anymore.

Guillén: Can you speak to how you worked with your director of photography Daniela Knapp to create the pastoral atmosphere of The Poll Diaries? The look of the film is gorgeous, all that late afternoon low-angled amber light reflected off the surfaces of things. If I walk away from a movie with even just one image seared into my mind, I am happy and with The Poll Diaries it was that amber light glinting off of spider webs wavering in late afternoon breezes and those busy black ants trafficking over the coarse bark of trees. I'm sure you didn't place those spider webs or anything; but, I admire how your DoP had an eye for such pastoral detail.

Kraus: Though The Poll Diaries was my fourth film, I wasn't able to work with Judith Kaufmann who was my DoP on Four Minutes. Daniela arrived in Estonia five weeks before shooting began so it was just a process of bringing her into the project. And though, yes, you are right, we did not place the spider webs on the set, the ants were placed by four people who brought them in.

Guillén: [Laughs] Ant wranglers!

Kraus: Yeah, really. [Laughs.] Absolutely. I think it was wonderful that Daniela had the same vision. She contributed some very good ideas. But sometimes communication doesn't have to do with speaking. Of course you talk and all that, but you also communicate on another level and, perhaps, this is again that special thing of working with women. It's easier. With men, something else happens. You never have such problems working with women. You have other problems; but, not the ones you have with men.

Cross-published on Twitch.

TIFF 2010—L.A. Zombie (2010)

The North American premiere of Bruce LaBruce's unavoidably controversial L.A. Zombie (2010) positioned in TIFF's Vanguard program indicates that it's not quite enough of a horror film but way too much of a gay porno film to satisfy most Midnight Madness buffs. Notwithstanding, through its melding of zombie genre tropes and hardcore mansex, L.A. Zombie achieves a transgressive edginess while eliciting an unexpected poignancy, much more so than LaBruce's previous zombie/porno hybrid Otto: Or Up With Dead People (2008). TIFF's short capsule states: "Corpse-eating meets poverty politics in this pornographic art film set on the streets of Los Angeles, where an alien zombie brings dead men back to life." In his expanded defense of the film, Noah Cowan indirectly argues for the concept of "elevated genre", admitting it is hardcore gay porno but suggesting it is equally an art film reminiscent of Jacques Rivette's Paris nous appartient and a strong maturation of LaBruce's usage of digital media (no pun intended).

From the film's premiere at Locarno, David Jenkins dispatched to Time Out London: "Rather than a torrent of extreme bad taste, the film turns out to be a tender study of otherness in the big city and a cunning reversal of genre conventions." At Eye Weekly, Adam Nayman concurred: "Bruce LaBruce's already-notorious film is more melancholy than confrontational. Porn star François Sagat plays the zombie, Los Angeles plays itself and assorted corpses are tenderly sexed back to life." At Xtra, Matthew Hayes spoke with an upbeat LaBruce after L.A. Zombie was yanked from the Melbourne International. At Twitch, Todd Brown insists "outside the hardcore cult film scene [L.A. Zombie] will have EXTREMELY limited appeal." He's way more fair than Torontoist's John Semley who fumes, "A spiritless, pointless amalgam of gory zombie picture and hardcore porn, L.A. Zombie is the confluence of two cultural crosscurrents that nobody asked for." But whether LaBruce made his film for those who prefer to be comfortably enslaved to the narrative or for those whose critical objectivity is hazardously gnashing at the homophobic bit, or—more to the point—whether LaBruce would be true to his own artistry if he ever made a film someone asked for, I predict his film will speak to a larger community than is now being granted and that L.A. Zombie's shelf life will gain a poetic notoriety, as well it should.

Myself, I'm somewhat intrigued by L.A. Zombie's surprising poignance given its horndog reliance on pornography to remonstrate a heartfelt argument for how identity is perceived both within and through others. I would have readily sought out an interview with Bruce LaBruce but—after reading Olivier Père's "Ten Morally Indefensible Answers From Bruce LaBruce On L.A. Zombie" in the current issue of Cinema Scope—I felt the job had competently been accomplished. Unfortunately, Père's article has not been chosen to be made available online.

This film could easily be entitled The Zombie Within or, alternately, The Zombie Perceived, though its focus on L.A. suggests a possible referent to that city's thriving porn industry, or perhaps more exactly the rejects of that industry rendered as homeless hunks. L.A. Zombie stages a relevant tension between self-image and projected fantasy, especially as seen through the eyes of queer men, both gay and trade. I've long admired LaBruce's ability to enflame controversy within the queer community, which—as it increasingly approaches a disappointing homonormativity—deserves to be shaken up and reminded of its radical potential. When Hustler White (1996) screened at the Castro Theatre some Framelines back, I thought a near riot was going to erupt during the amputee sex scene. Outraged men stood up and shouted at the screen while others stood up and shouted at them. To hell with all the petty heterosexist dismissals of queer film, here was a film that stabbed a lightning rod into the queer community itself and I loved the ruckus! I was one of those cheering the scene on while my own partner at the time prudishly edged towards the exit. You can't forget a divisive movie moment like that.

It's especially difficult not to read too much into L.A. Zombie and to let it stand on its own raw, sexually ravishing ethos; but, here are a few of my own thoughts, wayward or not. When the film's protagonist is visualized as an alien zombie—whether he is thinking of himself as an alien zombie or being seen as an alien zombie—he is adorned in glaring primary neon colors. When he's not being visualized as an alien zombie, he is depicted as a homelessly hot homo who—at first—you want to offer your shirt to but then—on second thought—prefer to leave shirtless, charity be damned. LaBruce is commenting on an eroticized solidarity, an exact specularity that's involved when queer men perceive themselves or see each other as zombies, fuck each other, as if to become non-zombie, i.e., human. This is the tenderness that is so surprising in L.A. Zombie for being presented so ghoulishly.

Pursuing the wound fucking initiated with Otto, L.A. Zombie converts the penetration of another's wound as a life-giving act. It's as if LaBruce is suggesting that furtive zombie sex makes you feel human; akin to sexual indiscretions that leave you feeling innocent once fully satisfied. Within this visual transgression lies an ancient fascination wherein the virile erection is—for wont of a better term—a magic wand. In fact, according to Thomas Wright in his 1886 essay "A Worship of the Generative Powers" (p. 28): "One name of the male organ among the Romans was fascinum ... hence [is] derived the words to fascinate and fascination." As if to prove that point, I remember visiting Pompeii and reading in the literature that winged phallic tintinabulum were hung in the doorways of Roman houses and shops as protection. But I digress by aligning ancient phallic charms with today's thriving fascination with the commodified gay porn body....

Whether or not LaBruce intends his domain of gay imagery to bear the taint of HIV infection—a near cultural cliché in the social imaginary—it's difficult to resist tracing a metaphor of "the walking dead" as an infected constituency negotiating its compromised and complicated pact with life. What's perhaps the most intriguing reversal in this scenario is that the experienced dead in L.A. Zombie restore life to the recently deceased. It's like one big support group of the dead. There's even a disturbing hint of the undeniably questionable philosophy of infecting others with HIV as providing "the gift." I've often wondered what exactly that "gift" is supposed to be? A sense of longed-for belonging, albeit to a community whose awareness of life has become intensified for being threatened? I really don't know. It's a disturbing concept to me.

LaBruce's appropriation of homelessness speaks less to me as a contemporary social condition than it does as an existential longing for "home", for a place within a community already fractured and disenfranchised. This malaise of alienation beautifully reveals itself in the doughnut café sequence which is framed in a frontal horizontal composition reminiscent of certain Edward Hopper paintings. There's a genuine pathos in our alien zombie trying to be like his former human self: ordering coffee at the till, exchanging currency and then (unsuccessfully) gulping it down. How many late night denizens have expected as much human connection from a cup of coffee?

But LaBruce is not totally without humor. There's an amusing cardboard box sequence reminiscent of the Tardis on Dr. Who. The alien zombie enters the cardboard box shelter of a homeless man who has died to bring him back to life. Once he's inside, it's like he's in a huge cardboard room. It's a wonderful shift of perspective.

Schizophrenia has been bandied about a lot in reviews of L.A. Zombie to make sense of the film's shifting perspectives and even LaBruce admits in his Cinema Scope interview that "the alien zombie may be a homeless schizophrenic." Earlier he mentioned he was influenced by the theories of post-Freudian psychoanalyst Melanie Klein: "She talks a lot about splitting and projection in terms of subjectivity and identification, so I was thinking about those kinds of schizophrenic perceptions of reality." I guess that's as good a handle as any to explain why sometimes our protagonist looks like a zombie, other times doesn't, and—towards the end of the film during its disturbing group kill sequence—becomes something of a super-zombie. I found it profoundly unsettling during that kill sequence to be unable to determine the exact presence of our alien zombie. Was he at the window voyeuristically watching himself in something of a group sex fantasy and, if so, does fantasizing himself in this way account for why he has metamorphasized into a super-zombie? Is all of this to say that the sexual drive has been zombified? I don't think there are answers to these questions, and I didn't ask to have them be posed, but I certainly appreciate Bruce LaBruce's audacity to ask them.

Finally, after all of his efforts to simulate his humanity and to bestow life on the recently dead, our alien zombie frequents a graveyard and digs up a grave as if to return to source. As a final touch of irony, the headstone reads LAW. Do what thou wilt and all that....

Cross-published on Twitch.

TIFF 2010—My Own Private Microfestival

Due to the late announcements this year, I just didn't have time to work up all my program-oriented research notes. Visions, Contemporary World Cinema and Real to Reel eluded me; but, truth is, it's the combination Public and P&I schedule that truly determines the availability of my choices anyway. The following screening schedule is, of course, a work-in-progress attempting to incorporate Diana Sanchez's programming of Latin American, Spanish and Portuguese cinemas, a sampling of the City to City spotlight on Istanbul, genre-juicy fare from Colin Geddes in both his Midnight Madness and Vanguard sidebars, and some of Dimitri Eipedes' recommendations from Eastern Europe thrown in for good measure. And yes, shockingly, even a red carpet event or two! But it's always subject to change contingent upon recommendations from colleagues, vagaries in weather, physical exhaustion and whether or not my sweet tooth can resist the occasional apple crumble pie from the Queen Mother Cafe, savored in the respite of warm sunshine and fresh air.

Thursday, 09/09

9:30 The Light Thief, NFB, 80m, CWC/Eipedes
11:30 Four Times, The, Jackman Hall AGO, 90m, DISC/Eipedes
2:15 Poetry, Scotiabank 11, 140m, MAST/Fulvi
5:30 Marimbas From Hell, NFB, 80m, DISC/Sanchez
9:30 Legend of the Fist, Elgin, 110m, SP/Fulvi [public]

Friday, 09/10

9:30 A Useful Life, Scotiabank 8, 70m, VIS/Sanchez
11:30 The Poll Diaries, Scotiabank 8, 130m, SP/Bailey
2:00 Curling, Scotiabank 11, 100m, VIS/Bilodeau
5:00 Film Socialism, Scotiabank 4, 100m, MAST/Handling
8:30 Guest, AMC4, 130m, RTR/? [public]

Saturday, 09/11

9:15 Carancho, Scotiabank 3, 110m, CWC/Sanchez
11:45 A Horrible Way to Die, Scotiabank 9, 85m, VAN/Geddes
2:00 Interview w/ José Luis Guerín
3:45 Julia's Eyes, Scotiabank 11, 112m, SP/Sanchez
6:00 Machete Maidens Unleashed!, NFB, 90m, RTR/Geddes
9:45 Dhobi Ghat, Scotiabank 4, 100m, SP/Bailey

Sunday, 09/12

10:00 A Screaming Man, Scotiabank 10, 90m, SP/Bailey
12:30 Nostalgia For the Light, Scotiabank 5, 90m, MAST/Sanchez
2:30 Sleeping Beauty, Scotiabank 4, 90m, MAST/Cowan
5:00 Leap Year, Scotiabank 11, 95m, CWC/Sanchez
7:00 Wavelengths 4: Dorsky, Jackman Hall AGO, WAV/Picard
9:30 The Housemaid, Roy Thompson, 107m [public]

Monday, 09/13

10:40 Interview with Im Sang-soo
12:15 October, Scotiabank 5, 90m, DISC/Sanchez
2:00 I Saw the Devil, Scotiabank 2, 150m, SP/Fulvi
5:00 Route Irish, Scotiabank 2, 110m, MAST/Handling
9:00 Rabbit Hole, Elgin, 120m, SP/? [public]

Tuesday, 09/14

9:30 Amigo, Scotiabank 10, 130m, SP/Handling
12:30 Uncle Boonme, Scotiabank 10, 120m, MAST/Fulvi
4:30 The Ward, Scotiabank 4, 90m, MM/Geddes
6:45 Aftershock, Scotiabank 11, 130m, CWC/Fulvi

Wednesday, 09/15

9:15 Mysteries of Lisbon, Scotiabank 13, 272m, MAST/Handling
2:30 Even the Rain, Scotiabank 2, 110m, CWC/Sanchez
5:00 Interview With Chris Kraus
6:15 13 Assassins, Scotiabank 3, 130m, MAST/Geddes
8:45 Mamma Gógó, Scotiabank 11, 90m, CWC/Gravestock

Thursday, 09/16

9:00 Lope, Scotiabank 7, 110m, SP/Sanchez
11:30 Bunraku, Scotiabank 7, 120m, MM/Geddes
1:30 Stake Land, Scotiabank 9, 100m, MM/Geddes
4:00 Cirkus Colombia, Scotiabank 3, 120m, SP/Maheux
7:30 Autumn, Scotiabank 1, 100m, DISC/Bailey

Friday, 09/17

9:00 Essential Killing, Scotibank 13, 90m, MAST/Handling
11:00 Interview With Aamir Bashir
12:00 Somersault In A Coffin, NFB, 80m, CTC/Van de Ven
2:00 Block-C, NFB, 90m, CTC/Van de Ven
5:00 ANPO, NFB, 90m, RTR/Fulvi [public]
8:00 Dark Cloud, AMC4, 90m, CTC/Van de Ven [public]

Saturday, 09/18

9:30 How I Ended This Summer, Scotiabank 11, 130m, CWC/Eipedes [public]
1:00 What I Most Want, AMC9, 80m, DISC/Sanchez [public]
4:00 Apichatpong/Mavericks, Lightbox 3 [public]
9:00 10 to 11, Varsity 7, 110m, CTC/Van de Ven [public]

Sunday, 09/19

9:30 Confessions, Scotiabank 11, 110m, VAN/Fulvi [public]
12:00 Cold Fish, Scotiabank 2, 150m, VAN/Geddes [public]
4:45 Anything You Want, Varsity 7, 101m, CWC/Sanchez [public]
6:45 Special Treatment, Scotiabank 4, 95m, SP/Handling [public]
8:30 L.A. Zombie, AMC10, 65m, VAN/Geddes [public]