I can’t vouch for the first 22 editions of the Chicago International Film Festival, but the 30th threatens to be the best since I moved to this town in 1987. Much of the usual fat and filler has been trimmed away, and the selections this year are unusually thoughtful and judicious (thanks in large measure to the efforts of coprogrammer Marc Evans, who knew where to look). Happily, there’s more attention given to older films, and the overall spread of films promises a veritable bounty to anyone ready to take the plunge.
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There must be some dogs as well, but I’ve been lucky enough to miss them. The films I’m most inclined to steer you away from–Wes Craven’s New Nightmare, Le buttane, Rio’s Love Song, 71 Fragments of a Chronology of Chance, Take Care of Your Scarf, Tatiana, and We, the Children of the 20th Century–are at worst only mediocre. If the festival were as spotty as it’s been in previous years, I might even halfheartedly recommend the last two, as well as a few other films I’m not fully sold on. (Ron Holloway’s hour-long documentary Paradjanov is no great shakes, but it’s still worth seeing for the glimpses of early Sergei Paradjanov films that haven’t yet reached Chicago.) With so many choice goods available, the main difficulty is not determining what to avoid but working out a viable viewing plan.
Zeroing in on these clusters, or perhaps a few others (e.g., three Finnish features by the goofy Kaurismaki brothers), brings a certain shape and continuity to one’s viewing, yielding extended, homogeneous experiences that are likely to be more meaningful than random smorgasbords. This is especially true now that the festival has once again been forced to spread its screening locations across the city. Though not all of the aforementioned clusters are concentrated at one location, a clear effort has been made in many cases to allow for this sort of structured viewing.
I haven’t begun to speculate here about the 60-odd films I haven’t seen, but as usual I’ve asked several of my colleagues–16 in all–to help me out in reviewing as many of the films as I’ve been able to assign. (A few of the capsules for older films were written years ago by former Reader critics Don Druker and Dave Kehr.) I’ve offered my own short descriptions of the ones that none of us has seen, based on various festival catalogs and handouts (which are not always reliable). Titles preceded by a check mark are recommended by the reviewers.
