Film

Searching for quality beyond the hype at this year’s Sundance Film Festival

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The D Train stars James Marsden and Jack Black.
Hilary Bronwyn Gayle

Whenever reports emanate from the Sundance Film Festival about a record-setting acquisition deal, it's worth remembering some of the other movies that have sold for huge amounts of money in Park City: Hamlet 2. The Spitfire Grill. Happy, Texas. Whether this year's Sundance darling, Me and Earl and the Dying Girl, will join that roll call of shame is impossible to say, but the fact that it won the Grand Jury Prize, the Audience Award and an offer from Fox Searchlight variously reported as amounting to anywhere from $7 million to $12 million ultimately doesn't mean a whole lot. Critics and distributors alike are always overly eager to identify a potential commercial juggernaut, leaving smaller, worthier efforts to die of underexposure.

One of the best films I saw at Sundance this year attracted virtually no attention, playing to a nearly empty theater at its sole press screening. Inspired by writer-director Charles Poekel's experiences selling Christmas trees from a camper on the streets of Brooklyn, Christmas, Again mostly eschews narrative in favor of a melancholy mood, observing its lonely protagonist (Kentucker Audley) as he delivers holiday cheer to people whose lives seem much brighter than his own. A hint of romance appears when the guy finds a young woman (Hannah Gross) passed out on a park bench and rescues her from the cold, but Poekel isn't really interested in providing reassurances that everything will be okay. Buzz failed to ignite.

<em>The Forbidden Room</em>

The Forbidden Room

On the other hand, sometimes the raves are accurate. Robert Eggers' The Witch turned out to be as magnificently upsetting as advertised—a 17th-century Puritan creep-fest in which the supernatural elements are only slightly scarier than the characters' hardscrabble ordinary lives. Likewise, early reports that Canada's gleefully eccentric Guy Maddin had shown up with a winner were confirmed by The Forbidden Room, which sees Maddin apply his customary anachronistic, silent-era style to a glorious Russian-doll structure of nested narratives. Not interested in the tale of the men trapped in a submarine at the bottom of the ocean? Wait for a woodsman to stroll in (how?) and relate his own goofy adventure.

Speaking of goofy, this was a strong year for comedies at Sundance, and an especially strong year for risk-taking comedies. Highly anticipated films from Noah Baumbach (Mistress America) and Andrew Bujalski (Results) underwhelmed, but new talents filled the void with genuinely bracing, envelope-pushing work that straddles the line between hilarity and pathos. The Overnight, for example, could have been a one-joke affair about a straitlaced couple (Adam Scott and Taylor Schilling) who discover that their new neighbors (Jason Schwartzman and Judith Godrèche) are swingers; instead, it takes its characters' various insecurities seriously, even as it wrings laughter from outrageous scenes involving nude dancing and prosthetic penises. The D Train, a Jack Black vehicle about a guy determined to save his high-school reunion by persuading the class' most popular alumnus (James Marsden) to attend, goes even further, pivoting on an early twist that flings the movie in a new, much thornier direction. The result is uneven, but it's a miracle that the film was able to attract two major stars, given its provocative subject matter. Just a few years ago, it would have been made with unknowns, or (more likely) not made at all.

Speaking of things that would have been impossible in the very recent past, it's now possible to shoot a reasonably good-looking widescreen motion picture on an ordinary iPhone (outfitted with an anamorphic lens adapter). That's how Sean Baker shot Tangerine, a high-octane melodrama about a couple of transgender hookers on the streets of LA, played by actual transgender actors (Kiki Kitana Rodriguez and Mya Taylor). It's an understandable choice—these two women are so aggressively mobile, hurling themselves in and out of emotionally volatile situations, that the cinematographer probably lost half his body weight just keeping up with them, even holding a palm-sized camera. Tangerine seems unbearably hyperactive at first, but its refusal to judge anybody—even the police—eventually makes it irresistible.

And what of Me and Earl and the Dying Girl, the aforementioned talk of the festival? Here I must confess that I can't provide a reliable report, because I bailed on the film after about half an hour (not knowing or suspecting that it would soon become a phenomenon). To me, it seemed like a thoroughly mediocre teen comedy/weepie, about a dorky wannabe filmmaker who's forced to befriend a classmate who's dying of cancer. Fans claim it becomes unbearably moving in the home stretch, but I couldn't make it past the cavalcade of Criterion Collection references and Werner Herzog impressions and Film Forum T-shirts and other pandering cinephile references. What are the odds that something like this would excite a small city stuffed with cinephiles? Check back later this year to see whether it can connect with anyone else.

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