April 07--The 32nd Chicago Latino Film Festival kicks off Friday, bringing a deep selection of primarily (but not exclusively) foreign films to town. The majority are Spanish language with subtitles, but some are in English as well, including the premiere of "One Night Stand" from Chicago filmmaker Alonzo Alcaraz.
The fest continues through April 21. Here's a review roundup of some of the films.
"Pearl" (5:15 p.m. Saturday and 4:15 p.m. Sunday)
Oh, this movie. Oh, this dog.
A modest film that owes its appeal to the mutt at its center, this story about a street dog in Santiago, Chile, works best when the emphasis is more hound than the human, with a performance that feels as true to dog's inner life as it is going to get.
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We first get a look at Pearl as she sits, her face in profile, calm but alert as she gazes from a hilltop perch overlooking the city below. "That's me. My name is Pearl" she says, voiced with a delighted and warm energy by Daniela Ropert. "My story begins here."
She is a greyhound-German shepherd mix, I'd guess, with a long nose and a sleek black and tan coat. In flashback we learn how she arrived at this spot. Her owner took her there one day, led her to some food, snapped off the leash and vanished. He just abandons her. (Why do people do this?) The way writer-director Sergio Castilla films her darting around afterward, up some stone stairs and down, sniffing in search of her owner, is a marvel of dog acting, my friends. She looks genuinely panicked and confused.
This is a major departure from how we see dogs behave in Hollywood fare, where a staged quality is the norm, like that of a child actor being coached from off-camera. That is not how dogs actually move through the world. At all.
But Pearl's psychology seems entirely doglike and Castilla is deft in the way he refuses to anthropomorphize her, despite that internal monologue, which is forever winning and optimistic -- "Adopt me!" she says more than once to a friendly stranger -- without an unpleasantly cloying aftertaste. If this were the premise of an animated film, it would probably grate; that an actual dog is filmed, being a dog, is what sells it.
A struggling screenwriter eventually becomes her human companion, and the story is based loosely on Castilla's own encounter with the dog, who is called Linda in real life. The Latino Film Festival's Alejandro Riera was helpful in tracking down (and translating) some Spanish-language background:
"Castilla adopted her about five years ago when he saw her wounded on the street corner near his house in Santiago. He pretty much told her to 'come' and she followed him to his house."
There are significant portions early in the film that capture, documentary-style, the lives of Santiago's street dogs. They are remarkably relaxed amid the hustle and bustle. Not typically feral at all. It's fascinating. Castilla told an interviewer He would "set Linda loose in parks and streets and record her and her interactions with other humans and dogs."
"Internet Junkie" (6:15 p.m. Saturday and 6:45 p.m. Monday)
A teenage girl curls up in bed with her laptop, sucking on a lollipop suggestively. In the bedroom next door, her teenage brother logs onto a porn site. At some point during their online wanderings, they end up instant messaging one another, but because they're using assumed names and disguising their real identities, they have no idea they're sexting with a sibling.
The film (from writer-director Alexander Katzowicz) is a collage of barely related moments -- not so much stories as snapshots -- that center around the twinned themes of sex and alienation. We crave the intimacy (carnal or otherwise) of real life and yet technology has forever changed the way that dynamic unfolds. Or if it even happens in person at all.
That seems to be the idea anyway, but I'm not sure there's much here that feels especially discerning or revealing about the human condition in its tech-obsessed 21st century incarnation.
"One Night Stand" (8:30 p.m. April 15 and 8 p.m. April 19)
This film from Chicago writer-director Alonzo Alcaraz can't quite get its arms around its romantic comedy aspirations and struggles mightily when it comes to emotional credibility. In it, two strangers form a tentative pairing that morphs from bickering to lust to genuine interest in the other person over the course of a single night.
The bulk of the film (shot in Chicago and featuring a Latino cast) takes place in the apartment of Paulie, who struck up a hostile quasi-flirtation earlier that night with a guy named Mo. Random insults follow. And then a truce. And then endless Linklater-esque talk punctuated by (what should be) barely suppressed sexual tension.
This is Alcaraz's first feature and it is based on some of his own experiences, but as a screenwriter he has a ways to go. Neither the dialogue nor Yunuen Pardo's turn as Paulie feels emotionally credible. Pardo in particular struggles with the film's conversational style. On the plus side, some of the footage is sharp, including a montage of friends clowning around as they walk through Chicago's nightlife. And Eddie Martinez's Mo is easygoing screen company, giving a low-key performance that feels just right for a guy not sure what's going on but is still sort of intrigued anyway.
With brief but effective performances by LaNisa Frederick as a sharp-talking bartender, and Cruz Gonzalez-Cadel as one of Paulie's friends who, based on some very funny line readings alone, makes the most of a throwaway restaurant scene.
The 32nd Chicago Latino Film Festival runs through April 21. For more info and a full schedule of films, go to www.chicagolatinofilmfestival.org.
nmetz@tribpub.com
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