REVIEWS REAL TO REEL


US. 2011. 93mins Director/cinematographer Jonathan Demme Production companies Clinica Estetico, Jacob Burns Film Center, POV/ American Documentary International sales Clinica Estetico, lindsayjaeger@ gmail.com Producers Steve Apkon, Simon Kilmurry Editor Ido Haar Music Zafer Tawil


I’m Carolyn Parker — The Good, The Mad And The Beautiful


BY DAN FAINARU


I’m Carolyn Parker is a hymn to the indomitable greatness of the American spirit. Jonathan Demme’s documentary on the last woman to leave her ruined house after Hurricane Katrina wiped out large parts of New Orleans — and the first one to return and rebuild it — is just the kind of shot in the arm needed right now for troubled Barack Obama supporters to justify everything in which they believe. Held together by the ebullient, invigorating personality of


60-year-old Mrs Parker, who takes every obstacle as another challenge to her natural undefeated spirit, this account of her struggle to restore her wrecked home to its initial condition is bound to go a long way, not only in festivals and specialised distribution but also as an inspirational piece for frequent televi- sion broadcasts. Avoiding all the predictable preachy speeches about govern-


ment neglect and corruption usually associated with the sub- ject, Demme chose to follow Mrs Parker for five years. We move through her evacuation from her wrecked house, through the long period she was lodged in a trailer as repair work proceeds, stalls and then proceeds again, until she finally marches back into the house, glowing and victorious. A black woman — though she tells Demme her father was


Mexican — overweight but constantly on the move, washing, cleaning and cooking for her family, always alert and ready to take a stand, Mrs Parker is proud of her older son who has already graduated college. Her younger daughter, still at home to help her mother, is following in her brother’s steps. Here is every qualification needed for the perfect American,


one who believes in God and trusts in His work, a good person who gets mad (though not very often on screen) when crossed and is beautiful enough inside to make you forget she is no movie star. She does not need to be, for she has a pair of expres- sive eyes that fill up the screen and make you ignore the rest, at utter ease moving in front of the camera and addressing it as if she had done it all her life. And she has plenty to say.


SPECIAL PRESENTATIONS


Fr. 2011. 93mins Director Emanuele Crialese Production companies Cattleya, Rai Cinema Co-producers Babe Films, France 2 Cinema International sales Elle Driver, www.elledriver.eu Producers Riccardo Tozzi, Giovanni Stabilini, Marco Chimenz Executive producer Gina Gardini Screenplay Emanuele Crialese, Vittorio Moroni Cinematography Fabio Cianchetti Editor Simona Paggi Production designer Paolo Bonfini Music Franco Piersanti Main cast Filippo Pucillo, Donatella Finocchiaro, Mimmo Cuticchio, Giuseppe Fiorello, Timnit T, Martina Codecasa


Terraferma REVIEWED BY LEE MARSHALL


Perhaps the most remarkable thing about Emanuele Crialese’s small but powerful new feature, set against the background of the influx of African boat people to the tiny Italian islands of Lampedusa and Linosa, is extra-textual: the fact Timnit T, who plays an illegal-immigrant woman given reluctant refuge by an island family, was one of only five survivors of a boatload of 70 immigrants that washed up on Lampedusa while the director was working on the treatment for the film. That Terraferma makes no mileage out of this is a credit to


Crialese. But it is all of a piece with his unfussy approach, which is simply to tell a strong story in a way which, though it occasionally comes across as naïve in its liberal simplification of the issue, wins through thanks to a Ken Loach-like combina- tion of heart-on-sleeve commitment and elegantly succinct dramatic structure. That said, and despite its universal subject, Terraferma feels


like a more local product than the director’s last, the trans-Atlan- tic emigration fable Golden Door. Its commercial trajectory will probably be similar to that of Respiro (2002) — also set on Lampedusa — with a wide arthouse release on home ground followed by more limited action elsewhere. Much is made (some of it in a lightly comic vein) of the para-


dox of an island where poverty, hardship, suffering and death co-exist with the beach-fun antics of the summer leisure indus- try. But Crialese is careful not to push this into sensationalism: when a group of half-dead Africans make land near Nino’s beach bar, the bikini-clad bathers rush to help, with only one pausing to take a photo on his mobile phone. Terraferma is shot in deep, saturated colours that bring out all


the harsh majesty of the islands’ volcanic landscape, and accom- panied by a wistful soundtrack that underlines the film’s mes- sage by fusing Sicilian and African influences. Though there is nothing here to compare with the painterly symbolic tableaux of Golden Door, the director indulges in some dreamlike underwa- ter views, and one closing aerial shot that reminds us boats can ferry souls to better lives, or to the afterlife.


n 20 Screen International at the Toronto Film Festival September 9, 2011


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