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Film>>
October 12-18, 2017 • Bay Area Reporter • 23
Mill Valley Film Fest’s grand finales by David Lamble
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he final four days of the 2017 Mill Valley Film Festival (10/1215) offer an array of award-season film fare at venues across Marin County. Here’s a quick preview of 10 to watch. “Wonderstruck” Director Todd Haynes spins the parallel tales of a young boy in the Midwest and a young girl in New York 50 years ago as both seek the same mysterious connection. The film reunites Haynes with Julianne Moore, their fourth outing after “Safe,” a cautionary fable about a woman poisoned by toxic chemicals (1995); “Far from Heaven,” an homage to 50s director Douglas Sirk (2002); and “I’m Not There,” in which six actors provide impressions of poet-musician Bob Dylan (2007). (Smith Rafael Film Center, 10/13) “Lady Bird” This Sacramentobased drama from first-time director Greta Gerwig focuses on a Cath-
olic high school senior, Christine “Lady Bird” McPherson (Saoirse Ronan), attempting to navigate the confusing world of college applications. (Rafael, 10/15) “Summer 1993” Spanish director Carla Simon tells a young girl’s story as she visits an uncle. Six-year-old Frida’s parents have succumbed to AIDS, and the story explores the emotional journey Frida must complete to cope with her grief. In Spanish with English subtitles. (Sequoia, 10/13; Rafael, 10/15) “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri” In this darkly comic drama, a grieving mother (Frances McDormand) leases three message boards outside her small town aimed at provoking the police chief (Woody Harrelson) into finding the person who murdered her daughter. Things come to a boil when the chief ’s deputy (Sam Rockwell), an immature momma’s boy, is drawn into the case. Directed by Oscar winner Martin
McDonagh. (Larkspur, 10/15) “The Shape of Water” From master storyteller Guillermo del Toro comes an otherworldly fairy tale set against the backdrop of 1962 Cold War America. In the hidden highsecurity government lab where she works, Elisa (Sally Hawkins) is trapped in an isolating routine. Everything changes when Elisa and co-worker Zelda (Octavia Spencer) discover a secret classified experiment. Rounding out the cast are Michael Shannon, Richard Jenkins, Michael Stuhlbarg and Doug Jones. (Rafael, 10/15) “Call Me by Your Name” Luca Guadagnino’s film unfolds over a glorious Northern Italian summer in 1983. An Italian falls for an American student who arrives to live and study with his family. Together they share music, food, and romance. James Ivory and André Aciman adapt the latter’s novel. With Armie Hammer, Timothée Chalamet and Michael Stuhlbarg. (Sequoia, 10/12;
Courtesy MVFF
Julianne Moore in director Todd Haynes’ “Wonderstruck.”
Larkspur, 10/14) “The Current War” New docudrama on electricity from filmmaker Alfonso Gomez-Rejon provides a thumbnail history lesson on how
the lights came on, showing how three inventors – Thomas Edison (Benedict Cumberbatch), George Westinghouse (Michael Shannon) and Nikola Tesla (Nicholas Hoult) – brilliantly married technology to human dreams and desires. (Sequoia, 10/15) “Quest” Filmmaker Santiago Rizzo presents a true story from the streets of 1995 Berkeley. Mills, middle-school kid and burgeoning graffiti artist, is floundering until he meets a sympathetic teacher. (Larkspur, 10/14; Rafael, 10/15) “Radiance” Japanese director Naomi Kawase’s tale unites a woman who describes films for visionimpaired fans and a photographer who’s gone blind. In Japanese with English subtitles. (Rafael, 10/13; Sequoia, 10/14) “Fourth Movement” SF’s own indie Rob Nilsson fashions a sound and visual treat celebrating the diverse strands of life in the Tenderloin. (Rafael, 10/14)t
Suburban sexual exploration by Brian Bromberger
Mrs. Fletcher: A Novel by Tom Perrotta; Scribner, $26
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estselling author Tom Perrotta has been called the Steinbeck of suburbia, and the Jane Austen of 21st-century sexual practices. He focuses his razor-sharp eye on cultural mores, dissecting their hypocrisies with genteel humor. In the end, order is restored to the burbs. Hollywood has produced several movies based on his books, the most recent being the popular HBO series “The Leftovers.” His new novel “Mrs. Fletcher” is cleverly constructed, compulsively readable and adept at creating suspense out of everyday living. This novel has tantalizing moments, but because of a conformist ending, the reader may feel unfulfilled. Eve Fletcher, a 46-year-old single mother divorcee, is taking her only son, Brendan, to Berkshire
State University, a party school. Brendan is a handsome, athletic lout who, even after breaking up with his girlfriend Becca via text, hungover from a night of drinking, is willing to receive a farewell blow job from her. Eve overhears their play and is distressed by his put-down of women (“Suck it, bitch”). She wants to talk to him about it, but he sleeps on the ride to campus and immediately bonds with his roommate Zack, as they plan on drinking, shagging, and videogaming the semester away. While Eve is the executive director of the Haddington Senior Center and likes her job, she is a lonely empty-nester and soon tires of watching “Friends” reruns and reading Facebook posts (“It had been a lot easier to be a loser before social media, when the world wasn’t quite so adept at rubbing it in your face, showing all the fun you were missing out in real time.”) One night she receives an anonymous
naughty text, “U r my MILF. Send me a naked pic.” Googling what MILF means (Mother I’d Like to Fuck), she is introduced to the world of amateur Internet porn featuring sexy middle-aged women. Eve starts
to make new friends, enrolling in a community college course, “Gender and Society,” taught by transgender professor Margo Fairchild. She becomes infatuated with her younger employee Amanda at work, and Julian, a skateboarding classmate her son’s age. Meanwhile, Brendan (his story is told in first person, Eve’s in third person), wounded by his parents’ divorce and jealous of his father’s new family, assumes women will be at his disposal. Instead he repels his fellow students with his chauvinistic white privilege. He becomes increasingly isolated and flounders in his courses. He is attracted to Amber, a socially conscious woman. They have sex, which the porn-addled Brendan turns rough and degrading, leading to a public shaming. He quits college and returns home to Eve, who is just starting to appreciate her newfound freedom. The book mostly succeeds as a
sexual awakening of a middle-aged woman. Porn becomes the entryway for her to explore her erotic desires. Porn has the opposite effect on the insensitive Brendan, leading to behavior that turns off women. Eve and Brendan’s stories alternate throughout the book, and Eve is the more adventuresome, learning to see gender and sexuality as a spectrum rather than a binary. Both explore their identities and make bad choices along the way to hilarious effect, as they muddle their way to happiness, suburban-style. Perrotta is focused on how we think about sex, how we deal with our unruly desires, and how the Internet has reshaped American dating. Perrotta’s most developed character, Margo Fairchild, might be one of the most self-actualized transsexuals in contemporary literature. If only Perrotta had been as daring with Eve, who flirts with lesbianism but never quite gets to the finish line.t
some initial confusion) eventually adored and devoured by readers locally and far-flung, and soon made Maupin a household name. The author spares no detail in sharing his adoration for and dalliances with Rock Hudson, describing how heartsick he was
upon learning of Hudson’s AIDS diagnosis in 1985. Maupin’s memoir is honest, connected, and ever-thankful for the family he relates to most, which includes author Christopher Isherwood, actor Ian McKellen, and actress Laura Linney.t
Sentimental journey by Jim Piechota
Logical Family by Armistead Maupin; HarperCollins, $27.99
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t’s a busy time for Armistead Maupin, beloved author, ringmaster of the “Tales of the City” series, and recent returnee to his home city by the Bay with husband Christopher Turner. His memoir “Logical Family,” an honest, smoothly-written, intimate affair dedicated to Turner, arrives fast on the heels of a justreleased and quite marvelous documentary on his life called “The Untold Tales of Armistead Maupin.” When enjoyed together, they form integrative companion pieces alongside the beloved “Tales” series of books. Throughout frank yet affably written chapters, Maupin, 73, warmly reflects back on his upbringing as the son of bigoted parents growing up in conservative 1940s North Carolina, aware of his burgeoning sexuality, yet not willing to sacrifice pleasing his father for the kind of sexual freedom he truly craved. Together with his best friend, the author spent the summer before college “romancing the Confederacy” at the North Carolina Civil War Centennial Commission preserving battle provisions before
entering law school. Bored with the curriculum and unconcerned with mediocre grades, Maupin abandoned that endeavor in favor of another of his father’s wishes for him: the armed forces. But a stint as a U.S. Navy officer in Vietnam failed to stem the tide of his homosexuality, which emerged even as his time in the armed forces waned. Though the memoir’s timeline is a bit jumpy, the anecdotal memories Maupin shares coalesce beautifully into a rich tapestry sewn through
with youthful innocence, simmering activism, and the kind of boldness and resolve necessary to survive the heartbreak and unstoppable sorrow permeating the height of the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s. Arriving in San Francisco in the early 1970s, the author began creating his “logical family,” a term he derives for the group of loved ones “that actually makes sense for us.” Settled in the Bay Area, he immediately ventured toward a gay bar where men were “slow dancing to Streisand under twirling colored lights, as if that were the most normal thing in the world.” He then grabbed a copy of this publication, which, back then, was “a gay handout whose initials conveniently spelled out the word bar,” and quickly became adept at “pickup sex” after scoring an apartment on Sacramento Street a block away from the cruisy bushes of Lafayette Park. He soon branched out to enjoy the bathhouses generously sprinkled from North Beach to the South of Market district. Maupin’s writing career took off after he’d been commissioned in 1976 by the San Francisco Chronicle to write six weeks’ worth of episodes of the character-driven serial series “Tales of the City,” a love letter to San Francisco that was (after