Limited runs:
Karmen Gei: As one of her fellow inmates at the women’s correctional facility Prison Kumba Castel says about her, there is no one like Karmen (Djeinaba Diop Gai). She attracts men and makes women undo their robes. According to her fellow prisoner, when Karmen Gei is around, “hide your women, hide your men.” In this musical African re-telling of Carmen, Bizet’s operatic score has been replaced with Senegalese music and dancing. After Karmen seduces Angelique (Stephanie Biddle), the female warden of the prison, she takes flight, only to land at the prenuptial ceremony of Majguene (Aissatou Diop) and soldier Lamine (Mahaye Niang). Once again under arrest, Karmen escapes, but not before casting her spell on Lamine, who spends the remainder of the movie trying to clip Karmen’s wings. Fiery, passionate and exotic, Karmen Gei’s musical and dance sequences revive a tired genre and the title character, with her yard-long braids, bright smile and non-stop erotic body is a bad girl for the ages. Rating: 7.5/10 (@ Gene Siskel Film Center – 312/846-2800 – 9.13 – 19, 6:15 & 8:15)
“International Dinner & A Movie”: The Vanishing (Dutch cuisine served) 10.15; Amarcord (Italian cuisine served) 11.12; Rashomon (Japanese cuisine served) 12.10; (@ Chicago Cultural Center, 78 E. Washington, 312/742-8497).
In theaters
Swimming: Swimming is a little movie with an enormous impact. Frankie (Lauren Ambrose in a pre-Six Feet Under breakthrough performance) and her older brother Neil (Joseph Pais) operate Wheeler’s, their family’s boardwalk restaurant in Myrtle Beach, after their parents retired to Arizona. Frankie’s best friend Nicola (Jennifer Dundas Lowe) is the proprietor of the piercing stand next door. Both young women are prepared for another boring summer of tourist trade and beachcombers when two new people arrive to change Frankie’s life. Josee (Joelle Carter), the sexually confident girlfriend of lifeguard Brad (James Villenaire) is hired as a waitress at Wheeler’s and Heath (Jamie Harold), a good-natured stoner who sells tie-die t-shirts out of the back of his van, tilt the axis of Frankie’s world, sending her swimming in new waters. Frankie is unused to the kind of attention that she receives from both Josee and Heath, giving her a newfound assurance which effects her relationships with Nicola and Neil. Exceptionally well-acted (especially by Ambrose, Carter, and Harrold), gracefully directed (by Robert J. Siegel) and very well-scripted. Swimming is worth taking the plunge. Rating: 8/10 (opening 9.13 @ The Landmark Century Cinema)
Auto Focus (Sony Pictures Classics) : Paul (American Gigolo) Schrader directed this uneven bio-pic which is based on Robert Graysmith’s book The Murder of Bob Crane. Crane (played by Greg Kinnear) is almost as equally well-known for his hit 1960s TV sitcom Hogan’s Heroes as he is for the mystery surrounding his brutal murder in 1978. The movie begins in 1964 when Crane, a radio DJ, aspiring drummer and struggling actor, is given a script by his agent Lenny (Ron Leibman) for the TV series that would make him a household name. Meanwhile, the teetotaling Crane is battling the inner sexually compulsive demons that threaten to break up his marriage to Anne (Rita Wilson), the mother of his children. The demons eventually take a human form in John Carpenter (an especially slimy Willem Dafoe), an electronics expert employed by Sony. Carpenter, a lady killer with a bisexual streak, opens a door into the sexual underground and the world of video sex for Crane, while plying him with liquor and drugs. Crane’s downfall is gradual and ugly and includes two divorces, alienation from his children, embarrassing public scenes, tabloid headlines, and his ultimate inability to find work in his field. Rating: 6.5/10
My Big Fat Greek Wedding (IFC Films/Gold Circle/ HBO/Playtone) : Based on her one-woman show, Nia Vardalos plays Toula Portokalos, a single, 30-year-old “ugly duckling” of Greek heritage, whose parents have given up on ever getting married in this year’s surprise box office comedy smash hit. After transforming herself into a swan to go back to college, she meets Ian Miller (John Corbett), a WASP-y high school teacher, and they fall in love. What’s love without complications? Toula’s parents, Gus (Michael Constantine, of TV’s Room 222 fame) and Maria (original diva Lanie Kazan), provide comedic complexities, and the rest of her family, including meddling Aunt Voula (the brilliant Andrea Martin) and muscle-bound brother Nick (Greek god Louis Mandylor), don’t make things any easier. The most ethnic wedding comedy since Monsoon Wedding, some of the more specific cultural references might seem like Greek to many audience members, but there are enough universal family truths and laughs to make you want to shout, “Opaa!” Rating: 7/10
On DVD:
Straight: A Conversion Comedy (StageDirect) : Transferring a one-person show from the stage to the screen isn’t an easy proposition. Something usually gets lost in the translation. David Drake’s The Night Larry Kramer Kissed Me is one exception. David Schmader’s Straight is another one. The story begins at a urinal in a North Seattle office building where gay male writer and performer Schmader is investigating, both personally professionally, a ministry offering “daytime support groups for men recovering from sexual broken-ness.” Schmader provides his own individual history, which includes his own intoxicating thrill of coming out (described as a second puberty) and his happiness as a gay man, opposed to the hell of growing up a gay kid. He then leads us to what brought him to explore the world of ex-gay, and before you know it he’s at a religious retreat in Texas. Schmader’s spot-on observations about both the gay community (for example: he says that he understands “the hunger for artistic representation and the importance of support, but to give a rousing standing ovation to an extremely mediocre gay arts event seems no different than clapping extra loud for the retarded kid in a talent show”) and the futility of conversion therapy, provide as many opportunities for serious contemplation as they do genuine belly laughs. The minimal set, consisting of a Persian rug with strategically placed chairs and desk, allows Schmader room to move. Schmader himself, an average looking guy with an expressive face and an authoritative voice, does a stand-up job of keeping the viewer’s attention. Rating: 7.5/10
A Matter of Taste: Told partially in flashback, following a murder, this delicious French psychological thriller has the ability to quench thirsts and satisfy hungers. When wealthy “mad about hygiene” businessman Frédéric Delamont (Bernard Giraudeau) hires former waiter and group house resident Nicolas Rivière (Jean-Pierre Lorit) to be his food taster, one of the most twisted, addictive, homoerotic and deadly relationships in movie history develops. As Nicolas becomes more entangled in Frederic’s intricate, but tasty, web, his girlfriend, newsstand operator Béatrice (Florence Thomassin) becomes suspicious, but by then it is too late. The incredibly sexy Lorit is the kind of snack that is well worth the empty calories and if you have an appetite for movies that examine the strange things that people will do for money and power, than A Matter of Taste is your cup of tea. Rating: 7.5/10