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Film

Indie Flicks: Fact swamped by fiction

By STEVE PERSALL and PHILIP BOOTH
Published April 28, 2005

In My Country (R) (108 min.) - Like Hotel Rwanda, John Boorman's film addresses an African tragedy overlooked by U.S. media sources. Unlike Hotel Rwanda, the fictional elements added to an already compelling true story leave In My Country flawed and unfulfilling.

The film is set in 1994, when South Africa purged itself of apartheid through the Truth and Reconciliation Commission hearings, in which victims of racist violence, mostly committed by white Afrikaaners with government approval, confronted their abusers. Amnesty was available to anyone who confessed, told the entire truth and proved the crimes were committed under orders. The shame of being forgiven, as often happened, was punishment enough.

Antjie Krog's novel, adapted by Ann Peacock, uses this potent drama as a backdrop for two people's growing more self-aware and, in the movie's worst move, falling in love. Samuel L. Jackson plays Langston Whitfield, a Washington Post reporter sent to cover the hearings, who immediately reveals his righteous bias. Juliette Binoche plays Anna Malan, an Afrikaaner embarrassed by her culture's bloody intolerance. Her job as a radio journalist gets her into the hearings, where she mostly gasps at testimonies.

The first hour of Boorman's film is fine: The hearings take center stage and Langston's sense of outsider superiority softens. He doesn't understand South Africa's pain or cure as much as he thinks, and neither do we. Then he softens so much that Anna is drawn to him, taking the focus off political history and making this simply a star-crossed love story between two married people.

The performances are solid, especially Brendan Gleeson as a former police officer charged with brutal deeds, confronted by Langston at regular intervals. Gleeson's character is something to hang a climax upon, a feel-good moment wedged into Langston and Anna's romance. In My Country has the power of truth on its side, although it's sacrificed for easier-to-digest fiction. B-

- STEVE PERSALL, Times film critic

House of D (PG-13) (97 min.) - Formulaic and sentimental to a fault, David Duchovny's writing and directorial debut is a first-draft idea in which everyone speaks in poetic words polished to annoyance. It's a coming-of-age film that isn't heartwarming, provocative or funny, although Duchovny seems convinced that's exactly what he's achieving.

House of D begins in present-day Paris where Tom Warshaw (Duchovny) has missed his 13-year-old son's birthday, offering an excuse to his ex-wife. It all stems from his own 13th year, living in Greenwich Village with a neurotic mother (Duchovny's wife, Tea Leoni). The movie becomes an extended flashback to the summer when, in cliched independent film tradition, everything changed forever.

Anton Yelchin plays young Tom, a bright kid whose best friend Pappass (Robin Williams) is a mentally challenged janitor. Casting Williams in such a role is a terrible mistake; he's too self-aware of the character's preciousness potential and can't resist throwing in familiar gags, such as faked slow-motion running and pelvic gestures. He makes Pappass capable of both soapbox monologues and embarrassing outbursts. The actor gets in the way of the role, rather than servicing it.

There's also an improbable relationship between Tom and Lady Bernadette (Erykah Badu), an inmate in the house of detention giving the film its title. She's inside a cell on the fifth floor, but they share all kinds of life wisdom through shouting without any New Yorkers telling them to hush. Lady guides Tom through rocky times with his mother, Pappass and a budding romance with a classmate (Zelda Williams, Robin's daughter).

Duchovny shows potential as a director, moving the story along briskly and devising a few interesting camera angles. He needs a craftier screenplay to present, without the artificial emotion and melodramatic turns, especially the final 20 minutes when adult Tom returns to his old neighborhood. Duchovny has the typical sure hand with actors that thespian directors possess, but his instincts are colored by too much devotion to what he wrote. C-

- S.P.

Winter Solstice (R) (95 min.) - Nothing much happens in Josh Sternfeld's suburban drama, since everything informing these characters happened before, and what they will do after the end credits is unclear. Yet the film is a smartly defined character study of bruised people going somewhere beyond the rut they're in. Winter Solstice moves slowly, but every minute counts.

Anthony LaPaglia is quietly effective as Jim Winters, a widower coping with two rebellious teenage sons, Gabe (Aaron Stanford) and Pete (Mark Webber). The circumstances of his wife's death are unremarkable, but the aftershocks are strong. Gabe can't wait to move to Tampa, for unexplained reasons except that it isn't their New Jersey neighborhood. Pete is underachieving at school, although a cool teacher (Ron Livingston) prods him to try harder.

The tensions among these people are seldom explained; Sternfeld's screenplay goes out of its way to not be obvious or expository. The introduction of a new neighbor, Molly, played to a delicate balance by Allison Janney, could be a prelude to jealous rants and Jim's guilt about a new relationship. But Winter Solstice even plays that casually, leaving itself open to interpretation, a rare tactic these days.

I liked what Sternfeld didn't make big deals about: Pete's hearing aid, suggesting deafness that might be a reason for his attitude, and Gabe's relationship with a girlfriend (Michelle Monaghan) that should be a reason to stay. Winter Solstice simply eavesdrops on a family, if not exactly in crisis, then at least in flux. It's a patiently suggestive piece of work. B

- S.P.

Walk On Water (NR) (104 min.) - Despite good intentions, the Israeli drama Walk on Water is nearly suffocated by its heavy-handed symbolism. The image of a weeping child is contrasted with that of an adult who's medically unable to cry. Two men, caked in black mud on a bright white beach at the Dead Sea, bathe in the ocean as good-and-evil certainties wash away. And, most pointedly, an ultramacho Mossad assassin is beguiled by his friendship with the gay grandson of a Nazi war criminal.

Lior Ashkenazi is a study in dangerous cool as Eyal, a troubled Israeli intelligence agent who poses as a tour guide for Axel (Knut Berger), a young German man who has come to Israel to visit his sister Pia (Caroline Peters) on a kibbutz. Eyal's assignment is to find out what, if anything, the siblings know about the whereabouts of their grandfather. Walk on Water, a combo mismatched-buddy movie, old-school spy thriller and humane analysis of the devastating moral impact of revenge, tries to accomplish far too much in less than two hours. It almost works. B

- PHILIP BOOTH, Times correspondent

[Last modified April 27, 2005, 10:13:08]