Distressed families

Christian Century, Sept 25, 2002 by James M. Wall

FAMILIES IN spiritual crisis was such a dominant theme among the 26 films in competition at the Montreal World Film Festival that one suspected the selections committee was composed of zealous social workers. An Italian film, Casomai, directed by Alessandro D'Alatri, was especially appealing to the festival's ecumenical jury--three Protestants and three Catholics. It didn't hurt that Casomai features a wedding homily in which a priest brings judgment against forces that undermine family life--naming names, no less. Marriage, the priest insists, should be a community experience, not just a private union. The film's title, Casomai, can be translated as "almost never" or "an escape clause," suggesting the less than binding nature of modern marriage.

The festival's main prize went to another Italian film, The Best Day of My Life, directed by Cristrina Comencini. It features a widowed grandmother with three adult children. One of them is worried that her teenage son may be gay; another is married but having an affair; and the third child is afraid to tell his mother that he is gay. The gay uncle's counsel to the nephew who is uncertain about his sexuality is masterfully presented. Another grandchild provides the source for the title; she receives a video camera as a gift for her first communion, an event that brings the family together in church even as it exposes its divisions.

A different kind of family appears in the ecumenical jury's main prize-winner, The Last Train, from Uruguay and directed by Diego Arsuage. In this picture three men and a boy rescue a 19th-century train locomotive. The train had been sold to an American film company, and the three men, members of the Friends of the Rail Association, want it back. They blast through a garage door to start the engine on its escape route.

The Last Train is a caper picture with a heart. The script provides some wonderful observations on the limits and wisdom that accompany aging. Federico Luppi, as Pepe, a retired train engineer and union activist, insists on taking the 11-year-old along On a train journey from Montevideo, north to the Brazilian border. His reason? To give the boy an adventure. And besides, his two older companions have arthritic hands and couldn't possibly shovel coal fast enough without the boy's help.

Insults among the older trio mask the affection they feel for one another. Pepe is a mentor to the boy, and when danger threatens he sends him away to safety, "on a mission," so that he can notify the media of their adventure.

A Spanish film that should earn a North American audience is Carol's Journey, set in the time of the Spanish civil war and featuring Carol, a 12year-old who has been living in New York and has reluctantly come back to her mother's home village in rural Spain. The mother is dying of cancer and wants her daughter reunited with her grandfather. Carol's relationship with three village boys, which begins as an inevitable preteen battle of the sexes, evolves into a tender romance. The interaction of the children echoes the style of Frangois Truffaut, the French director who so effectively captured the joy, ambiguity and pathos of childhood.

Religion is introduced in the film when the local priest insists that Carol take Catholic instruction though she has arrived from America as a Protestant. To everyone's surprise, Carol agrees to become a Catholic but only if she can wear a boy's "sailor suit" to her first communion, rather than the "bride's dress" normally worn by girls. The priest agrees for the sake of family harmony.

Not every family-oriented film at the festival ends well. Karen Moncrieff's Blue Car was one of only two U.S. films shown in competition, and it is typical of American films in having absolutely no reference to religion or spiritual hope. David Stratham, best known for his work in John Sayles's independent films, is a high school teacher who befriends an alienated teenager searching for a father figure to replace her divorced parent. She finds one in her teacher, who appears at first to have the proper scruples to handle young crushes.

The other U.S. film in competition, Igby Goes Down, also makes a bleak assessment of American culture, which is shown to be rootless, immoral and weak at the core. Kieran Culkin, one of the Culkin acting brothers, gives a strong performance as a rebellious high school senior who hates his mother (Susan Sarandon) and seeks solace in all the usual vices. I disliked the film for being exploitative and pretentious, but younger viewers report feeling a strong identification with the Culkin character.

The festival's second-place award went to Innowhereland, the first feature film by director Tayfun Pirselimoglu. It confronts the issue of the "disappeared" in Turkey.

Sukrun, a mother working in the Istanbul train station, refuses to believe that any one of three corpses she is asked to identify in the morgue could be her missing son. Sukrun hears a rumor that he may be in Mardin, in Kurdish territory in southeast Turkey. Officials there discourage her attempt to find him. Her son's political activity, which may have led to his disappearance, is never revealed. Did he work against the Turkish government on behalf of the Kurds? Perhaps, but Turkish film censors would not have been friendly to overt accusations of government responsibility for the "disappearance" of citizens.