SIFF 2005 Rambling: Malfunkshun: The Andrew Wood Story, Mysterious Skin, 4, and Frozen

MALFUNKSHUN: THE ANDREW WOOD STORY 
(Scot Barbour, US, 2005, 107 minutes)   

I was Andy's biggest fan not because he was going to be a rock star. I was Andy's biggest fan because Andy was who he was. If you met Andy, you loved him like I loved him.--David Wood, Andrew's father

***** ***** ***** ***** *****

It's hard to predict whether viewers who aren't especially interested in the Seattle music scene will take to this well-constructed portrait. I am, so I did, though I was never necessarily a fan of Malfunkshun or Mother Love Bone--somewhat related bands Mudhoney and Nirvana were more my speed. 

Andrew Wood, AKA Landrew the Love Child, was the flamboyant front man for those first two acts, the latter of which morphed into Pearl Jam after his drug-related death in 1990. For those who enjoyed Doug Pray's Hype!, I'd recommend Malfunkshun. Plus, it includes members of the title band and Mother Love Bone, like Stone Gossard and Greg Gilmore, producer/musician Jack Endino of Skin Yard, Chris Cornell and Kim Thayil of Soundgarden, Wood's family, friends and fiancée, and other interesting locals.  

Neptune: Sat., 6/4, 6:30PM and EMP: Thurs., 6/9, 7:00PM.  

MYSTERIOUS SKIN
(Gregg Araki, US, 2004, 105 minutes) 

This evocative adaptation of Scott Heim's acclaimed novel is an impressive return to form for writer/director Gregg Araki (The Living End, The Doom Generation). More to the point, it's his best film. 

Yes, Mysterious Skin is disturbing--it concerns sexual abuse and the results thereof--but Araki suggests more than he shows, and the filmmaker coaxes fine performances from his cast, particularly Joseph Gordon-Levitt (yep, that Third Rock from the Sun kid) as the sociopathic Neil, Brady Corbet as the likably pathetic Brian, and Mary Lynn Rajskub (24's Chloe) as a woman who also believes she was abducted by aliens. Oh, and Harold Budd and Robin Guthrie of the Cocteau Twins provide the lovely score. 

Egyptian: Thurs., 6/2, 9:15PM and Uptown: Sat., 6/4, 3:45PM. 

Note: Araki is scheduled to attend both screenings.  

4   
(Ilya Khrzhanovsky, Russia, 2004, 126 minutes) 

Imagine, if you will, a film filled to the brim with whining, whimpering, barking dogs (lots of them), meat (lots of close-ups of cold carcasses and greasy, slimy cooked pork), alcohol (lots of it, mostly homebrew), puke (hey, where there's homebrew, there's puke), toothless old crones (lots of them, some gleefully topless), anatomically-correct cloth dolls with faces made out of chewed bread (masticated by the industrious crones) and, of course, suicide. 

4 takes every Russian stereotype you can imagine and throws them all up--pun fully intended--on the screen. I understand there's a fair amount of symbolism behind the bewildering array of unappealing imagery, and viewers more intrepid than myself may well appreciate the meanings they convey, but I was too repelled to try to figure out what it all means.

Neptune: Fri., 6/10, 2:00PM, and Sat., 6/11, 6:30PM.  

FROZEN
(Juliet McKoen, UK, 2004, 90 minutes)  

The starting point was this powerful and poetic article called Salvaging the Sacred, in which Marion Partington, cousin of Martin Amis, describes the emotional effects of her sister Lucy being missing for 21 years. (Lucy was eventually discovered to be one of the West victims).--Juliet McKeon

***** ***** ***** ***** ***** 

The aptly titled Frozen is a mostly successful, but frustratingly static look at the consequences of an impeded grieving process. 

Just as Kath (Shirley Henderson, the highlight of Sally Potter's Yes) can't properly mourn the loss of her sister, because a body has never been recovered, I found it hard to sympathize with her plight.

McKeon's debut feature presents an odd conundrum, because it's almost too successful at what it's trying to achieve, i.e. Kath's "frozen" state, emphasized by frequent shots of ice and water, ends up distancing us from her, despite Henderson's best efforts, and Sean Harris, the villain from Andrea Arnold's Red Road, makes for a fine foil. Still, Frozen is worth seeing, even if doesn't scale the same heights as Lynne Ramsay's Ratcatcher or Bruno Dumont's L'Humanite, the two films it reminded me of most.  

Harvard Exit: Fri., 6/10, 7:15PM, and Sun., 6/12, 4:15PM.  

Images: Guerilla Candy (Andrew Wood), The Moscow Times (4), the IMDb (Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Brady Corbet), and Alt Film Guide (Shirley Henderson). Aug 12, 2007 postscript: The Malfunkshun DVD is out now.