Day Three: Family Values

Young Adam

::	FILM DAY THREE: Family Values By Tobias Peterson

South by Southwest’s third day saw the festival building momentum as it continued to tiptoe between big names and independent visions. Nursing their Saturday night hangovers, SXSWers were nonetheless buzzing about this night’s premiere of Jersey Girl, the latest Kevin Smith project which showcased Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez — the first time they could be seen onscreen together since the roundly savaged Gigli. In the midst of rumored sightings of Smith film staple Jason Lee (Mallrats, Chasing Amy, Dogma) at the local Starbucks and rampant speculation about a Ben-n-J.Lo reunion, I eschewed the hype in favor of less noticed fare, fully confident that Jersey Girl would be coming soon to a multiplex near me.

The question of paying notice, however, can be a tricky one at film festivals. The critic’s ideal is to happen upon an empty theater and being the first to discover a cinematic genius that had been previously denied a venue to showcase such talent. The reality, however, is that empty theaters are generally just a sign of bad movies. Just as a film can be too big budget, too formulaic, and too unoriginal to matter, so can an independent film be too stilted, too amateurish, or too pretentious.

The happy ground is generally in the middle, as offerings like Code 46 had already demonstrated. Young Adam (playing to a full house) looked as if it might follow in the same footsteps, marrying mainstream talent with a project that sought to create a more daring cinematic vision. The film stars Ewan McGregor as Joe, a Scottish bargeman who lives and works on a boat with a family of three. After discovering a woman’s body in the harbor, Joe experiences a series of flashbacks that relate his connection to the victim as an old girlfriend. In the meantime, he carries on an affair with his boss’s wife Ella, played by Tilda Swinton (Adaptation), in the restricted confines of the barge and under the seemingly oblivious nose of husband Les (Peter Mullan).

What follows is a brooding study in amorality. The barge moves the characters slowly up and down the river, the tensions between them ebbing and flowing. Joe soon moves from Ella to her sister, to another landlady, and (in the flashbacks) to his old girlfriend Cathie (Emily Mortimer), and his character is reduced to an expression of base carnality. Joe has sex in rowboats, on barges, under trucks, in alleyways, and in strangers’ beds with every woman with whom he seems to come into contact. In the meantime, an innocent man goes on trial for the murder of his ex-girlfriend. Rather than acting in any forceful manner, he smokes and drinks whiskey in the local pubs.

Young Adam is a challenge then, asking audiences to follow a protagonist whose morality and inactivity make him generally repugnant. A particularly telling scene shows Joe, during an argument with Cathie, beating the unfortunate girl with a stick before covering her with custard, ketchup, and a variety of other condiments and having his way with her on the bedroom floor. Joe’s insensitivity goes from mysterious to ridiculous here, and the film does little to redeem his character (the only one we really spend any time with in the film) for the audience. This is not to demand a “happy” film or even likeable characters. The most frustrating aspect of Young Adam, though, is that it’s content to wallow in its own lasciviousness, without any apparent notion as to what point to make about such behavior.

Such pointlessness, however, seemed to be precisely the idea behind 24 Hours on Craigslist. Documenting the San Francisco based website’s influence in the span of a single day, the filmmakers sent out eight crews all over the city to create a montage of the bizarre stories behind the site’s thousands of posts.

For the uninitiated, craigslist is a sort of virtual Greensheets. Anyone can post ads for goods or services (to sell or to buy) for free. Since the site’s creation in 1995, craigslist has grown from San Francisco to offering the same service to over thirty cities around the world, with plans to provide for dozens more. The posts are also almost entirely uncensored (some drug references are coded to avoid prosecution), which makes for some extraordinarily compelling ads. Consider this post, taken off the Austin craigslist at random (apparently in honor of St. Patrick’s Day):

“Looking for some Irish charm, Gaelic sensuality and wit? I’m fit, fun, and very skilled in the Hibernian oral arts. Find out why 69% of the world’s women, when given a choice, choose Irish men. Looking for single women and couples for a wee bit of sensual fun. Discreet, honest, and eminently trustworthy.”

This, then, is the stuff of 24 Hours on Craigslist. The film documents such rare characters as a male Ethel Merman impersonator looking to start a heavy metal cover band, a couple interested in setting up a support group for owners of diabetic cats, and a gay porn star advertising his services as “porn star massage.” The film spends time with a multitude of similarly “unique” people, all of whom are inclined toward their own particular brands of idiosyncrasy.

The movie is careful to make the case, however, that craigslist is more than just a meeting place for freaks. Following the antics of a flash mob (those groups who descend en masse to pre-designated meeting places as instructed by text messages on their cell phones), the film draws a parallel between these groups and craigslist users as members of a community. We are all unique together, the argument goes. In this sense, the documentary is an interesting example of postmodern anthropology, looking at a group whose only affiliation is via the World Wide Web.

For groups or for individuals, both 24 Hours on Craigslist and Young Adam explore the notion of the alternative. Whether it’s anonymous encounters with Scottish housewives or a husband and wife Judo team, the films turn a critical eye toward the accepted standards of what passes for “normal” these days. The idea seems an apt one for SXSW. As midnight struck in Austin, revelers turned toward the city’s drinking quarter, housed on the (in)famous 6th street. Music blared over the asphalt, drunken buddies careened arm in arm down the sidewalk, and a man wearing a Burger King crown and sunglasses slapped away at a bass guitar, singing into the night. Vive le difference.