www.list.co.uk/film
COMEDY: DRAMA LAKE TAHOE (125)31'11‘5‘23‘.
More small-time deadpan shenanigans from Fernando Eimbcke. the mischievous young Mexican
writer/director of 2004‘s Duck Season.
ln a sleepy sun-baked Mexican suburb. teenage Juan (Diego Catano) crashes the family car. Stranded and fearful of reprisal, Juan goes in search of help to fix the car. His quest leads him to a mad mechanic and his spoilt boxer dog, a young mother who is convinced that her real place in life is as a lead singer in a punk band, and to 'The One Who Knows', a teenage mechanic obsessed with martial arts philosophy.
Like a Buster Keaton comedy on diazepam, Juan's absurdist journey unfolds in both ingenious and bewildering ways. Quirk and minor revelation undercut by subtle rumination is the name of the game here. The gentle meditations on boredom, poverty and America's fuel and labour hegemony (over their southern neighbours) constantly threaten to overwhelm the inscrutable and frequently languid tone. but never quite do.
Like a number of recent and soon- to-be released Central American films (also look out for Guatemalan slacker comedy Gasolina). Lake Tahoe is shrewder than its slim premise suggests. The shadows of Chavez, oil and bankrupt colonialism flick over this likeable and well-played comedy. plus Alexis Silent Light Zabe‘s cinematography is as compelling as marijuana smoke and Eimbecke and Paula Markovitch's screenplay bemuses its way into yOur memory. (Paul Dale)
I GFK Glasgow, Fri 7 O—Thu 76 Jul.
MUSIC DOCUMENTARY SOUL POWER (1_ 2A) 93min coco .
Just when you thought there were no more films to be made about the Muhammad Ali/George Foreman bout in Zaire in 1974 there comes a remarkable film about the 12-hour, three-night-long concert which took place around the
event
In 1974 musician Hugh Masekela and producer Stewart Levine made good on their pipe dream to bring together the very best African and American R88 musicians together at an African concert. They managed to convince boxing promoter Don King to allow them to combine the event with ‘the Rumble in the Jungle', the hyped boxing grudge match previously essayed in Academy Award- winning documentary When We Were Kings.
Using footage shot entirely at the time by legends of the music ve’rite documentary form (Albert Gimme Shelter Maysles. Paul Rust Never Sleeps Goldsmith, Kevin Harlan County, USA Keating and Roderick WATTSTAX Young), Soul Power shows the experience and performances of, among many others, James Brown, Bill Withers and Miriam Makeba. Director Jeffrey Levy-Hinte and editor David Smith have done a brilliant job of putting what was obviously acres of footage into a fascinating trajectory. And then there's the music. An unmitigated
jOy. (Paul Dale)
I Filmhouse, Edinburgh, Fri I O—Thu 16 Jul. GFT, Glasgow, from Fri 24 Jul.
PARODY
BRUNO
(18) 82min 0000
Poor Bruno! The 19-year-old presenter with the really hot body from Austrian TV fashion show Funkyzeitung has been ‘schwarzlisted’ following an unfortunate incident involving his all-Velcro suit at a Milan catwalk event. Leaving behind his pygmy Asian flight-attendant boyfriend, Diesel and Bruno (Sacha Baron Cohen) head to America to become the ‘the biggest gay movie star
l since Arnold Schwarzenegger’ and the world’s most
famous Austrian since Hitler. His proposed talk show, A-Lisf Celebrity Max Out goes down badly however with a focus group, who blanch at the talking penis and the celebrity foetus analysis segment. Equally unsuccessful is the sex tape involving our hero and an elderly Republican congressman; his efforts to champion a particular charity (‘if Clooney has Darfur,
what is Darfive?’); and his Middle East peace-brokering
mission, where hummus is confused with Hamas. Supported by his faithful assistant Lutz (Gustaf Hammarsten), Bruno decides that to conquer America, he will have to become straight - after all it worked for Tom Cruise and Kevin Spacey.
Baron Cohen’s much anticipated follow-up to Boraf,
again directed by Larry Cha es and co-scripted by Anthony Hines, is crude, politically incorrect, shocking, outrageous, vulgar, and very, very funny. And once again the star has physically transformed himself into his cartoonish character, here speaking in a high-pitched German accent and boasting a lean physique to show off a series of ultra tight-fitting outfits.
Pushy parents who don’t mind their babies being dressed up in Nazi clothes, the idiocy of celebrities, and baying daytime studio audiences who are enraged by Briino swapping an ipod for a black baby, might seem easy targets for mockery. As with Boraf, though, this style of extreme comedy reveals and satirises entrenched social prejudices such as racism and homophobia. If anything Bru'no becomes even funnier when our protagonist leaves LA behind and journeys into middle America. Heterosexuality itself becomes the butt of the jokes when Bruno visits a ‘gay converter’ who warns him about having to put up with women, attends Natonal Guards training camp and is punished at a swingers party. Oh, and Bruno also gets to mime having sex with a member of Milli Vanilli. Wunderbah! (Tom Dawson)
I General release from Fri 70 Jul.
9—23 Jul 2009 THE LIST 47