Sundance 2006 - Day one

Dave Calhoun shares a plane with Dolph Lundgren and enjoys two new new documentaries at the festival.

Jan 23 2006

Allow me to share two 'celebrity' sightings with you, both spotted on the transatlantic flight en route to Utah's Sundance Film Festival: Dolph Lundgren (the Swedish actor best known for playing He-Man in 'Masters of the Universe') and Sam Taylor-Wood (the British photographer best known for filming David Beckham asleep). Imagine this critic stuck in a US immigration queue between these twin representatives of the extreme polar opposites of our moving-image culture and a better metaphor for Sundance I can't think of.

Sundance is a festival where commerce and art clash - sometimes uncomfortably. While some of America's most personal, intimate and low-budget filmmaking visions unspool in the annual event’s projection boxes, several of the world's largest corporations (Intel, Volkswagen, Motorola…) simultaneously seek to milk the festival of its perceived indie credibility by taking over the town with various 'media lounges' and sponsored party venues. 'The inspiration for independent filmmaking is not all that different from the way we think about cars,' attempts the man from Volkswagen in the festival catalogue. 'It's original. It's creative. It's free of mainstream expectations.' They've got to pay for the festival somehow, I suppose.

But it's the films that count, and, thankfully, Dolph Lundgren doesn't have a movie at Sundance this year. Indeed, the evidence so far, after the first three days, is that festival director Geoffrey Gilmore's recent claim to have reined in his programme from the claws of Hollywood is more than just conciliatory talk. This year, Gilmore has cut the number of films in the more mainstream 'Premieres' section, allowing more attention to focus on the centerpiece documentary and drama sections which contain genuinely independent work from American filmmakers: small stories, original visions, daring execution. That's the plan, anyway.

And so on to the best (and worst) films of the first few days. 'Leonard Cohen: I'm Your Man' is a low-key and impressive music documentary that screened here on Saturday. Australian director Lian Lunson builds her film around a recent Australian concert at which musicians from Rufus Wainwright to Jarvis Cocker, Beth Orton and Nick Cave covered a set-list of Cohen numbers. The live performances – presented well - are mostly excellent and more than do justice to the singer's melancholic and dramatic repertoire. Lunson also offers a new interview with Cohen in which he is characteristically lucid, funny, smart and self-deprecating. Lunson offers her own small coup at the film's close. We see Cohen performing for the benefit of her film, and after a minute, the camera pulls back to reveal his backing-band. It's U2.

Another documentary made a lasting mark. Lauren Greenfield's 'Thin' is an intimate and quite devastating portrait of a Florida treatment centre for anorexic young women. Greenfield won the trust of four patients in particular and follows them closely over several months. We're never made explicitly aware of the camera's intrusive presence into this vision of self-loathing, denial and depression. There are no comments to camera. No references to the camera's presence. Yet Greenfield is always there – in group therapy, in the bedroom, in personal therapy sessions, in the weighing room and, most upsettingly, in the toilet when our subjects relapse and 'purge' themselves.

Of the dramas, two films stick out so far. 'Sherrybaby' is Laurie Collyer's debut film and features Maggie Gyllenhaal as Sherry, a single mother and recovering junkie who is released from jail in New Jersey and tries to rebuild her world while adhering to the strict conditions of her parole. The territory feels familiar, but the treatment here is sober, complex and blessed with a tour de force performance from Gyllenhaal.

'Stay', meanwhile, from director Bob Goldthwait, is a quite original blend of comedy and tragedy that riffs on a dark and bizarre secret harboured by its charismatic 26-year-old lead character Amy (Melinda Page Hamilton). Prepare to be shocked and amused for this secret is that in a fit of boredom as a college student, Amy once gave a blow job to her pet dog. Her world falls apart when she reveals this fact to her shocked fiancé and parents. 'Stay' falls somewhere between 'Me and You and Everyone We Know' and 'Meet the Parents'; odd but rewarding territory.

Ones to avoid? 'Black Gold' is a pompous British documentary that fails to do for the coffee industry what 'Super Size Me' did for McDonalds. 'Thank You for Smoking' was a hit at Toronto last year but strikes me only as smug, repetitive and mildly amusing. 'The Night Listener' is an adaptation of an Armistead Maupin novel that offers a rare restrained turn from Robin Williams in the lead role but little else beyond the territory of the mediocre, unambiguous thriller.

It's worth pointing out that three of the four films that I've singled out here for positive mention are directed by women. In a filmmaking world still so heavily dominated by male directors, that is both no mean feat and an encouraging sign.

To read day two, click here.
To read day three, click here.

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