LAFF 2008: Day 7

Wednesday was a day at LAFF that probably would’ve been more rewarding earlier in the festival when my energy was higher. As it is, we’ve passed the half way mark, there’s a feeling of winding down and I’m finding myself losing patience with some of the more challenging fare. Nevertheless, I came away with some interesting stuff.

First up was Where Are Their Stories?, a quiet, simple film from Nicolás Pereda that had to sneak up on me. It’s one of those glacially slow numbers with no music, long takes of ordinary people performing mundane tasks and a wisp of a plot - the kind that drive people who don’t like indie or foreign films crazy. I confess I was irritated and impatient with it as I was watching it, but as I began to reflect upon it afterward, the portrait it paints of life among the poor in rural Mexico began to emerge and it has grown on me.

The film opens quietly with young Vicente caring for his bed-ridden grandmother in the ramshackle home she keeps on a forlorn strip of land somewhere in Mexico. Before long, Vicente’s uncles and an aunt swoop down from San Antonio, Texas. Assuming the old lady will die soon, they fence off her property with plans to sell it. Vicente insists she’s getting better and wants to keep the land.

The rest of the movie involves the stoic Vicente traveling from one place to another, mostly by foot, hoping to find someone who can help him stop his relatives and mostly failing. Neither the mayor, his mother, a government official in the local capital nor a lawyer can help this man who just wants to live peacefully, caring for the grandmother no one else seems to have an interest in.

For patient viewers who like this kind of thing (and you know who you are), Where Are Their Stories? is abundantly rewarding. For those who like their movies a little more conventional (and you also know who you are), this one could be cinematic cancer. Me? I fall somewhere in the middle.

Next came the well-received Ballast, Lance Hammer’s film about a triangle of people living in rural Mississippi that I probably had the wrong expectations for. It’s far less elusive than Where Are Their Stories?, but it’s still very subtle and requires a higher degree of attention and patience than I’m always ready to commit. I’m glad I stuck with it though.

First we meet Lawrence soon after he’s discovered that his brother Darius has killed himself. Next we meet Darius’ wife Marlee, a recovering addict who seems on the verge of getting her life back together, and James, her 12-year-old boy who seems headed toward drugs and delinquency.

The three are enemies at first and they circle one another warily, but in time they come to realize that they not only need one another, they may need to be needed. It’s as simple as that, and yet it’s not so simple. The film is full of small moments of emotional truth and it avoids easy melodrama at every turn.

Anchoring the film is a quiet, gentle performance by Michael J. Smith Sr., a man whose size belies his soft-spoken bearing. Meanwhile, Tarra Riggs’ performance as Marlee gives the film much of its energy and JimMyron Ross is also good as young James. All three actors are local non-professionals and the dialogue came from a 2-month rehearsal process.

Even more than the first film, Ballast rewards the patient with a simple human story of regular people trying to make their way in the world.

Filed under: Film Festivals

Related Posts: - Indie Indeed - LAFF 2008: Day 8 - LAFF 2008: Day 10 - Part 1 - Review: Ballast (2008) **** - Review: Lust, Caution (2007) *** 1/2