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4 N. Diego Luna in Criminal (main pic), plus
(top to bottom), Nine Songs; Electric Edwardians; and Maria Full of Grace.
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()n Suntla} )tiu will \ILII'I to realise there are just too man) guntl lilinx to see in the euming week 50 a \ielxie from \mrk might he in Ul'LlCI'. There‘s Criminal. the ['8 \erxinn ml the Argentinian eon man film Nine Queens. There’s the tlixturhing 'l‘urkish (ierman drama about the cost of ~\e\ual lihet'atiun. Head On. .-\l\n un is the suurl} I'axeinating nihilixtie .-\u.\tralian teenage rites ul‘ passage mm ie Somersault. Pith Brad Anderxun's ealeil‘ying hnrrnr The Machinist. /.al\ Penn and Werner llermgk Incident at Loch Ness and. if _\'uu want to get really art} l'art} about it. _\uu ean \\;ite|t the Thai ne\\ “me break in .»\piehatpung \Veerasethakul’s (tr) saying that alter a bottle of Buekie) seltsnt'}‘ merluatl of a mm ie Tropical Malady.
The GWFF is on from Wed 9 Feb-Thu 17 Feb at the GFT, CCA, UGC, Grosvenor and other participating cinemas. To book tickets contact the cinemas or visit www.glasgowfilmfestival.org.uk.
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‘Wh
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not cast them all?’
Kaleem Aftab meets US director Todd Solondz, whose new film Palindromes casts eight different actresses in the leading role.
when New Jersey’s finest
filmmaker says: ‘I see a piece of myself in all my characters.’ That’s because Todd Solondz has built his reputation by portraying the most undesirable of characters, bullies (Welcome to the Dollhouse), paedophiles (Happiness) and racists (Storytelling) as affable human beings.
So what can we see of the director on screen? ‘It’s hard to say,’ he admits. ‘Yes, my films are autobiographical, but none of it actually happened. It’s a mixture of experience, observation and things you read. None of this really matters, what matters is that the audience connects to the story.’
Solondz is wearing his trademark oversized spectacles, which make him look the archetypal class dweeb, when we meet to discuss his much anticipated discourse on abortion film Palindromes. The 44-year-old director punctuates the conversation with the same self-deprecating humour that makes his movies, even when dealing with the most heinous and serious of matters, so amusing.
Abortion is the touchy subject that clearly separated the Christian right sentiments of President George Bush and his Democratic challenger John Kerry at the last US election. Solondz portrays
I t’s a little bit disconcerting
abortion with a studied complexity, yet it’s not the even-handed treatment of abortion that proved to be the film’s most contentious talking point at its Venice Film Festival world premiere. Solondz has cast eight different actresses, including Jennifer Jason Leigh, to play his new film’s 12-year-old- protagonist, Aviva.
Solondz says of the controversial casting methodology: ‘When I start a script, there has to be an emotional core for me. I knew that to use this conceit of having different actors play the same part would be somewhat alienating. My hope was that the cumulative affect of several different people playing this character would be more affecting emotionally, than had it just been one girl playing a part. That all of these people were
different really charged me and I’ve found before that in casting you always have a few people that you want to cast for different reasons, so I thought why not cast them all?’
His one regret was that when the film had its premiere, no one in the audience knew that eight different actors were playing the lead role. When the credits rolled talk centred on the casting rather than the issues at hand. No one seemed bothered that each of the characters was representative of a different emotional desire within Aviva. Solondz hopes that now his one-time secret is out, audiences will start connecting to the story.
I Pal/ndromes W/// be showing at GFI'I on Sat 72 Feb. and Gl—TQ on Mon 74 Feb as part of the GWFF.
I 7 “er, 27.". THE LIST 21