I am attending the Chicago International Film Festival over 14 days. Because I am due to view 24 films over that period I will not be doing full analytical blogs on each. I will post periodic reports with one paragraph reports covering several films in each.
The Festival opened Thursday nite. Over 150 selections.
Opening night presentation was Mia Madre from Italy. An absolutely milquetoast mish mash. From script to acting to directing and so on a real disappointment. Just as amazingly there were no appearances by actors or director at the showing.
Friday evening I saw I Smile Back starring Sarah Silverman. This was a low budget ($400.000) film and unfortunately had that aura to it. Silverman’s portrayal of a mother suffering from depression and addiction to drugs was very good. But she never quite got me into believing I was watching Laney rather than Sarah. This was possibly due to the weak performance from Josh Charles as her husband The script couldn’t make up it’s mind if Laney was dealing with depression or was a drug addict. The implicatin was that the addiction stemmed from the depression. There was no real character development, just hints about the past. Silverman made a personal appearance for a Q and A and provided some decent insight into her vision of the role. She also reported that there will be more dramatic roles forthcoming.
My second film on Friday was Dheepan. This film was awarded the Palm D’Or at Cannes this year. It must have been a bad year at that festival. Dheepan is a fairly decent film, it is just not top notch material. The acting is excellent and one is kept engaged with each of the main characters. The cinematography left much to be desired. It was too uneven. The editing was really poor. Story was hard to follow because of all the unnecessary side material.
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