Hot Docs 2011: May 4 (Wednesday)

Reviews of screenings from the 2011 Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival, Toronto, Canada.

The Good Life (Dir: Eva Mulvad)

Grown from the fertile soil out in the Grey Gardens comes this mother/daughter story of fading dreams and past prosperity. Here the characters are the eloquent (if no longer elegant) Annemette and her mother, Danes living on the Portuguese coast. The family business ruined after the '74 revolution (still a sort spot) and the inheritance spent, the pair struggle to survive on a modest pension. Annemette, brought up to be a "princess" and a child of privilege, cannot adapt to this reality and as a fiftysomething going on sixteen, petulantly believes work is below her. And so we watch with frustration the slow winding down of their lives, filled with the daily indignities that having to squeeze every last euro can bring. Annemette reacts to her mother with shocking callousness bordering on elder abuse, and if we can't ever quite sympathise with her, we get a notion of how her inflexible worldview came to be. A little slow at times, but a decent character piece.

Screens with the short Surpriseville (Dir: Tim Travers Hawkins), which also deals in isolation and domestic obliviousness. The gated community of Surprise, Arizona — arid, sterile, and every thing "just so" — looks like a certain kind of hell to me, but we meet some of its residents who are happy to be kept in a controlled place away from the real or imagined insecurities of the world. The approach is non-judgmental, but the accretion of the images of the lifeless streets with the interviews is enough to send a shiver down the spine of anyone who doesn't want to buy into the vision of a "master planned community".

Matchmaking Mayor (Dir: Erika Hnikova)

Like many small, rural villages throughout Europe, Zemplínske Hámre in East Slovakia¹ is slowly shrinking. Noticing an unacceptable number of unmarried men and women, the local mayor decides to deal with this in a no-nonsense, hands-on manner and get some people together to start working on the next generation of townsfolk. Fond of making speeches over the town's loudspeaker system, the mayor follows up the suggestive "In the Mood" with the announcement of a singles dance in the town hall. As the planning goes ahead, we meet a few of the town's singletons as they muse upon their love lives and why they've never found that "spark". Pitched somewhere between a cutesy-poo welfare state and "pair-up-or-else" heteronormative totalitarianism, the mayor is surprised that this task is less straightforward than building a new soccer pitch. Generally well done and worth seeing.

Screening with the short Two’s a Crowd (Dir: Jim Isler & Tom Isler), which introduces us to New Yorkers Allen and Collette. Marrying later in life, they've learned the hard lessons that a partner isn't someone who can complete every lacking and fill every void. In fact, perhaps their marriage has been so successful because they've each kept their own Manhattan apartments along with a heaping helping of mutual independence. This film follows a big change in their life when, for economic reasons, they decide at last to move in together. Witty and realistic, they make for fine companions in this snappy short.

Give Up Tomorrow (Dir: Michael Collins)

In 1997 in The Philippines, two sisters go missing, beginning a media frenzy. Among those collared for their kidnapping, rape and murder is Paco Larrañaga. Inconveniently, however, at the time Paco was hundreds of miles away in Manila — as dozens of witnesses affirm. This is just the beginning of a nightmarish web of injustice that sees Paco and six other men found guilty and eventually condemned to death. In the tradition of investigative docs like The Thin Blue Line (though less formally audacious) this documentary tracks a seemingly unending cavalcade of shocking revelations with unflinching rigour. And in the best tradition of advocacy documentaries, it leaves the viewer feeling implicated — as Bob Wiseman once sang, "I too am a prisoner / just because I have been told". Essential viewing.

---

¹ Zemplínske Hámre looks to be about four villages over from Osadné, which was visited in last year's Hot Docs. My conclusions from this admittedly small sample size are: a) every town in this neck of the woods is nestled in a beautiful valley, b) drinking is one of the things that there is to do there, and c) the ecosystem is capable of supporting numerous visiting documentary crews.