Sundance Day 4: I Am Buried, Love!

An easy day for me after the day 3, 5 film marathon (scroll down). I saw just 2 films. There would've been 3 but for a bus mishaps. Boo. Have also developed an irritating persistent cough. I blame all this fresh mountain air. My lungs are citified.

lo sono l'amore (I Am Love)
I'll have more to say about this Italian stunner as it approaches release but I'm too sick to parse it at the moment. So for those of you who are tweetless, I share this exchange between Guy Lodge and I.


I've rediscovered here at Sundance that I tend to respond best to visually driven films. Another critic I sat with at I Am Love complained that it kept him at a certain remove and that's totally true so long as you're speaking about its narrative or dialogue but the emotional content was all in its at first stately and then increasingly baroque rush of images and score. B+/A-? [I also suspect that I liked The Runaways better than most because I dug the visuals from director Floria Sigismondi, another contestant in the long line of great music video directors who made their way into feature films. But that's a story for another post.]

One more thing about I Am Love. I find it amusing that the initial foreign poster and the American poster are basically the same thing but for the star-f***ing.


Not only do three characters get cropped out to focus on the nuclear family, but it's also becomes all about Tilda Swinton. The font obscures the other actors and loops around to create a Bust of Movie Star. Place her sculptural beauty on your mantle.

...by which I mean buy a ticket when the film opens later this year.

Buried
The announcement that this accurately named thriller had been bought by Lionsgate -- who made (tidal) waves for the Sundance acquisition Precious last year -- came shortly before the screening for critics. I don't usually do this but I spent some of the movie and a good deal of time after the movie, thinking about how they could possibly market it. The movie takes place entirely inside a coffin with Ryan Reynolds as the unfortunate American truck driver trapped inside. He wakes up to this nightmare at the beginning of the film with only a cel phone and a lighter (and unfortunately all of his clothing). Spanish director Rodrigo Cortés displays enough technical creativity here in sound, lighting and shot differentiation that the gimmick is sustained surprisingly well. But how will they ever do a trailer without revealing the onion being peeled as it were? The fun (if such a thing can be called fun) is in how the story, predicament and politics are parceled out. And if you see a lot of that in the trailer... B

P.S. [*light spoiler*] I'm tempted to pettily subtract a grade due to the completely unimaginative voice casting. You'll never believe this but ubiquitous character actor Stephen Tobolowsky (in one of the voice roles) plays an asshole! Shocking right? When you hear that voice you simply know, thereby ruining one of the film's nastiest surprises.