Movies

Chicago Latino Film Festival

April 10, 2008

The International Latino Cultural Center presents the 24th Chicago Latino Film Festival, which continues Friday through Wednesday, April 11 through 16, at Instituto Cervantes (31 W. Ohio), Landmark’s Century Centre, Pipers Alley, and smaller venues throughout the city. Tickets are $10, $9 for students, and $8 for ILCC members. Following are selected films screening this week, all in English and/or subtitled Spanish. For more information call 312-431-1330 or see latinoculturalcenter.org.

City in Heat Argentina’s economic crisis reverberates through this 2006 romantic drama about middle-aged friends in Buenos Aires. After a financial debacle drives one of them to suicide, the survivors are jolted into a new awareness of life and torn between mourning their pal’s death and taking new chances on love. Writer-director Hernan Gaffet sets most of the story in a bar, which gives it a static, talky quality; only a desperate robber and homeless woman who wander in from the street serve to remind us of the wider chaos outside. 110 min. (AG)  Tue 4/15, 6 PM, and Wed 4/16, 6:30 PM, Landmark’s Century Centre.

I Am Andean At the beginning of this intriguing documentary a Peruvian band performing on a New York subway platform is joined by a lithe young woman whose dancing captivates onlookers. Her name is Cynthia Paniagua, and filmmaker Mitchell Teplitsky follows this enchanting talent to Lima, where she has a fellowship to study native dance. Despite her Peruvian and Puerto Rican descent, Paniagua is just a gringa to the jaded, undisciplined local dancers, so she heads to more remote towns in search of authenticity and dedicated instructors. Her journey intersects with that of another New York dancer, Nelida Silva, who has returned to her Peruvian hometown to host a prestigious festival but also finds traditions endangered by indifference and encroaching pop culture. 72 min. (AG)  Sat 4/12, 4 PM, and Mon 4/14, 8:30 PM, Instituto Cervantes.

Lies In 2003 a car bomb exploded in the parking garage of Bogota’s El Nogal social club, killing 32 people and wounding more than 200 others. Incongruously, this 2007 Colombian feature by Jorge Ali Triana uses the tragedy as springboard for a sex farce: a philandering executive (Diego Bertie) conceals a tryst by telling his wife he has business at the club and then must explain how he escaped the carnage. One lie leads to another, and soon he’s masquerading as a hero for the local news. Bertie is a pleasant leading man, but no one has succeeded yet in making a comedy about terrorism. 87 min. (AG)  Sun 4/13, 9 PM; Mon 4/14, 6:30 PM; and Tue 4/15, 6:30 PM, Pipers Alley.

Made in L.A. Undocumented garment workers in Los Angeles made international news with their 2001 boycott against Korean fashion retailer Don Chang and his highly profitable chain Forever 21, which sells knockoffs of designer apparel. Seamstresses from Mexico and El Salvador, who were putting in 12-hour days for $200 a week, picketed malls and took their case to court over a period of three years, advised by a legal team of mostly Asian-American attorneys. In finding their voice, some workers also mustered up the courage to change their lives: one left her alcoholic husband and another became a globe-trotting labor activist. Almudena Carracedo directed this enlightening 2007 TV documentary. 70 min. (AG)  Mon 4/14, 6:30 PM, and Wed 4/16, 8:30 PM, Instituto Cervantes.

Manuela and Manuel Humberto Busto plays the title drag queen, who finds solace from a recent breakup in the elaborate stage numbers he performs at a local nightclub. When his best friend gets pregnant, Manuel agrees to marry her, not realizing that one of his admirers at the club is her hidebound father. There’s an underlying sadness and complexity to the main character that might have intensified the drama of this Puerto Rican feature (2007). But director Raul Marchand Sanchez opts for a light and breezy tone, and this likable piffle is eventually overwhelmed by numerous wacky improbabilities. 94 min. (JK) Fri 4/11, 9 PM, and Sun 4/13, 6:45 PM, Pipers Alley.

Mr. President Adapted from a classic novel by Miguel Angel Asturias, this brutal Venezuelan political drama (2007) examines how fear and corruption trickle down into all strata of society. In an unnamed Latin American country a malevolent president eradicates enemies both real and imagined while romance improbably blooms between his aide and the daughter of an exiled general. Director Romulo Guardia adeptly dramatizes the pecking order of sycophants who cater to the president. The film also includes several graphic scenes depicting torture, and though the violence isn’t gratuitous, the practice has been essayed in so many other political dramas that it’s lost its potency. 120 min. (JK)  Sat 4/12, 8 PM, and Sun 4/13, 8:30 PM, Instituto Cervantes.

My Mexican Shivah After a free-spirited Jewish patriarch drops dead during a party, his friends and family come together to sit shivah over him but spend much of their time complaining about his roguish ways. This ribald Mexican comedy (2006) by writer-director Alejandro Springall uses the seven days of shivah to launch a series of hilariously escalating confrontations, including one in which elderly men nearly come to blows over who’s the more genuine Jew. Meanwhile angels invisible to the guests soberly calculate the dead man’s virtues and vices. Raquel Pankowsky is effectively grating as the dead man’s daughter, who’s embittered by his abandonment of the family for an alluring shiksa. In Spanish, Yiddish, and Hebrew with subtitles. 98 min. (JK)  Mon 4/14, 6:30 PM, and Wed 4/16, 9 PM, Pipers Alley.

Sanky Panky This crass musical comedy from the Dominican Republic stars the annoying Fausto Mata as a loutish grocery store owner whose desperate search for a sugar mommy takes him to a posh beach resort. Hired to entertain the guests’ children and forced to wear a chicken costume, he doesn’t have much luck with the ladies until he meets a sympathetic cutie from New Jersey. Writer-director Jose Pintor mines broad slapstick and class stereotypes for laughs but also relies heavily on Mata, who comes across like an extremely hostile Chris Tucker. Bring your earplugs. 111 min. (Reece Pendleton)  Fri 4/11, 9 PM, Landmark’s Century Centre.

Seven Billiards Tables In this amiable comedy drama, a single mother (Maribel Verdu of Pan’s Labyrinth) inherits her father’s decrepit billiards hall and sets about restoring it to its former glory, assisted by her small son and the father’s irascible girlfriend (Blanca Portillo). She also tries to reassemble the club’s legendary team of gruff-but-likable oldsters and whip them into shape for tournaments. From the motley billiards team to the weepy romantic subplots to the triumphs over personal adversity, everything here is thoroughly predictable. Yet Gracia Querejeta’s deft direction and a top-notch ensemble of Spanish screen veterans make it all go down surprisingly well. 112 min. (Reece Pendleton)  Mon 4/14, 6:30 PM, and Wed 4/16, 9 PM, Landmark’s Century Centre.

To Life In this wistful 2007 debut feature by Shai Agosin, a Mexican photographer (the sultry Ana Serradilla) visits her native Chile to settle some long-standing grievances with her estranged, 80-year-old father. But the young woman’s restless, impulsive sexuality pulls her into an affair with the local rabbi (Francisco Melo), a married man who is also her father’s teacher. Veteran Argentine actor Jose “Pepe” Soriano gives a warm, seemingly effortless performance as the father, who still rues the day he left his wife; his quiet remorse in reviewing the events of his life lends this Chilean drama much of its emotional resonance. In Spanish with subtitles. 100 min. (JK)  Fri 4/11, 6:30 PM, and Sun 4/13, 8:30 PM, Landmark’s Century Centre.

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