Capital Projections: Dressed to be killed edition
Capital Projections is The DC Line’s selective and subjective guide to some of the most interesting arthouse and repertory screenings in the coming week.
IN FABRIC
The most visually sumptuous movie of this year was officially released in December 2018, but it never had a commercial release in the Washington area, and you have only one remaining chance to see it on the big screen — tonight! Set sometime in the 1970s, this gorgeous ghost story stars Marianne Jean-Baptiste (Secrets and Lies) as Sheila, a middle-aged single mother who decides to start dating again and makes a fateful fashion purchase: a red dress that’s a perfect fit, even though it’s not really her size. What happens after she buys the dress — which comes to life when nobody’s wearing it — will shock you!
In Fabric is in some ways a blunt anti-consumerist jeremiad, but its images are so vivid and unsettling that it becomes a surreal satire. The film’s central set piece is an unusual department store whose TV ads use graphics in which the word “SALE” seems to drip blood — and whose women’s clothing department is hilariously off-kilter. There, a mysterious saleswoman (Gwendoline Christie) dressed in a Victorian mourning outfit speaks in a heavily accented broken English, encouraging her customer to purchase a blood-red dress that it turns out was the last thing worn by a model who met a violent death. Will it strike again?
Director Peter Strickland seems to have based his entire career on the Italian horror subgenre known as giallo, whose over-the-top offerings, like his films, typically feature buckets of blood and incoherent melodramatic plots. But in films like Berberian Sound Studio and Duke of Burgundy, he has taken that highly saturated ’70s aesthetic and developed a style that’s all his own. Strickland’s lushly photographed films would benefit from theatrical projection, but distributors have had trouble placing them in the Washington area’s arthouses, which have hosted only limited screenings, if any, of his work. Perhaps he is too arcane and, in some cases, outré; a scene where an elderly department store owner pleasures himself while watching his employees fondle an anatomically correct mannequin isn’t exactly mainstream fare. But for moviegoers looking for an original vision that transcends its influences, Quentin Tarantino isn’t the only game in town. At least, not tonight.
Watch the trailer.
Thursday, Sept. 19, at 7 p.m. at the AFI Silver Theatre and Cultural Center. $13.
EDIE
There’s a certain kind of cloying soundtrack music common to life-affirming dramas and supposedly charming TV commercials: It’s pleasant, inoffensive fluff used to hammer the viewer with sentimentality — and it’s all over this well-meaning but ultimately patronizing vehicle about a bitter octogenarian widow who gets a second lease on life. Veteran English actress Sheila Hancock, whose career goes back to the ’60s, stars as the title character, a woman whose controlling husband has died after a long illness. Decades of resentment have built up for Edie, who’s spent much of her adult life as a caregiver for an ungrateful family. Now her daughter wants to put her in a rest home. But Edie has never lost her love of camping, and the sight of a dusty rucksack inspires her to pursue a forgotten dream: to climb the Scottish mountain Suilven, an expedition she can only undertake with the help of a young guide (Kevin Guthrie).
Thankfully, writer-director Simon Hunter — whose previous feature was a futuristic thriller called Mutant Chronicles — doesn’t let Edie wallow in self-pity about her aging body, and the friendship that develops with her unlikely traveling companion makes for a cute buddy movie. Hancock and Guthrie handle their roles well enough to keep the predictable script watchable. But Hunter, aided by Debbie Wiseman’s mawkish score, milks the concept for every last drop of emotion, badgering you with the swelling airs of struggle and triumph — and marring what might have been a moving character study of a resilient survivor. The 85-year-old Hancock herself climbed Suilven during the shoot, becoming the oldest person to reach its summit. There may well be a good movie in the story of her ascent, but it’s not quite this one.
Watch the trailer.
Opens Friday, Sept. 20, at Landmark West End Cinema. $12.50.
THE SHARKS
The 30th annual Latin American Film Festival continues at the AFI Theatre and Cultural Center with a title that seems to promise a summer thriller about hungry sea creatures. But this low-key drama is about something that can be even more terrifying: growing up. The film tells the story of 14-year-old Rosina (Romina Bentancur), who lives in a small beachside town in Uruguay. She has a summer job in her father’s maintenance company, working alongside young men like Joselo (Federico Morosini), who takes a fancy to the boss’s underaged daughter. When the town buzzes with rumors of shark sightings, Rosina keeps her cool, all the while intrigued by Joselo’s fumbling advances.
Bentancur, in her first film appearance, is perfect as a girl who quickly grows out of her awkward stage into a bold self-confidence that makes her seem much more together than the older beach kids who like to talk about sex. This is the first feature too for writer-director Lucía Garibaldi, who with limited resources has crafted a convincing coming-of-age movie that’s a welcome antidote to the mawkish excesses of Edie — and not just in terms of its youthful demographic. Garibaldi uses music sparingly; while a techno soundtrack by Fabrizio Rossi and Miguel Recalde provides an intermittent sense of adolescent promise and excitement, the director trusts her young charges enough to let them convey growing pains without an artificial boost from an overeager composer. With its conflict resolved in just 80 minutes, The Sharks is a modest film, but it’s a smart, encouraging debut for Garibaldi and Bentancur.
Watch the trailer.
Friday, Sept. 20, at 5:30 p.m. and Wednesday, Sept. 25, at 7:15 p.m. at the AFI Silver Theatre and Cultural Center. $13.
PERSONAL PROBLEMS
In a program that was originally scheduled to occur during the government shutdown, novelist Ishmael Reed will appear in person at the National Gallery of Art for a screening of this once-lost video work made from 1979 to 1981. Directed by playwright Bill Gunn, who helmed the atmospheric Ganja and Hess, this experimental drama is a far cry from the vampires of that cult horror classic. Reed’s screenplay was inspired by his observation that people kept calling him about their personal problems; the sprawling soap opera that resulted has a palpable energy thanks to partially improvised dialogue from such actors as leading woman Vertamae Grosvenor and veteran Jim Wright (who had starred in Orson Welles’ legendary 1936 stage production of Macbeth). Personal Problems is also notable for video cinematography by Robert Polidori, who went on to a storied career in large-format photography. Last but not least, the score by Carman Moore and soulful songs by Sam Waymon (Nina Simone’s brother) set an intimate mood for this immersive slice of African American life.
Watch the trailer.
Saturday, Sept. 21, at 2 p.m. at the National Gallery of Art in the East Building Auditorium. Free.
THE ITO SISTERS: AN AMERICAN STORY
This weekend the Freer and Sackler galleries, in conjunction with the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center, screens this 2017 documentary about three Japanese American sisters whose immigrant parents struggled in the United States during the early 20th century. Now in their 80s and 90s, the Ito siblings lived through the anti-Japanese sentiment that led to their placement in American internment camps during World War II. The screening will be followed by a Q&A with director Antonia Grace Glenn (granddaughter of one of the Ito sisters) and Noriko Sanefuji, the Asian Pacific American History specialist at the National Museum of American History.
Watch the trailer.
Friday, Sept. 20, at 7 p.m. at the Freer Gallery of Art. Free.
THE PSYCHOTRONIC MAN
Ever wonder where the Washington Psychotronic Film Society gets its name? The origin story goes back to Michael Weldon’s similarly named magazine and film guides, which were in turn inspired by this 1979 thriller about a barber (Peter Spelson, the film’s producer) who can kill with his mind. The Psychotronic Man was the first independent feature made in Chicago, although the Allmovie website considers that its only distinction, writing that the “combination of bad acting, cheap effects, and sluggish script creates a dreamscape environment that the director couldn’t have intended.” But that’s exactly the kind of unheralded Z-movie that the WPFS champions.
Watch a music video with footage from the film.
Monday, Sept. 23, at 8 p.m. at Smoke and Barrel. Free.
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