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Seattle's International Film Festival: Part 5

SIFF Day 6 – Ticket Longings and Serial Killer Dread

By Sara M. Fetters.

Secret Longings
One of the highlights of the Seattle International Film Festival is the Secret Festival. Since 1983 SIFF has held screenings once a Sunday throughout the run of the event that are the most hotly sought after tickets in Seattle. At these screenings are shown world, US and local premiers, works in progress, controversial or banned films, long-lost classics and other works that have been or currently are unavailable to the general public. This part of the festival is so super secret that attendees have to sign legally binding nondisclosure agreements stating that they will never reveal what happened any of the Secret Festival screenings. It’s probably the best and most talked about aspect of SIFF, rumors fly throughout the festival as to what the programming for each Sunday screening will be. Everyone who attends SIFF knows about someone who has gotten thrown out of the Secret Festival for talking or they claim to know someone who attended and told them all about that Sunday’s film.

At SIFF, if you are not talking about the Secret Festival then you are going to the Secret Festival. Once more like every year I’ve been in Seattle, I’m doing a lot of talking.  Maybe next year I’ll get to shut up.

Is Serial Killer Genre Dead?
My last film on Monday was Imanol Uribe’s serial killer thriller Plenilunio. It was a long, melodramatic, nonsensical bore that had me unintentionally laughing more than once. Not the film to see 9:30 at night, that’s for sure, unless you’re looking to be put to sleep. Granted, it was my 25th
film of the festival and I was plenty exhausted before hand, but don’t get me wrong, this film was bad.

I’m not going to waste anyone’s time going into specifics on this one, but Plenilunio did get me thinking about something: is the serial killer genre as we know it dead? Probably not, I would guess, but with the paint-by-numbers quality of most of them of late, Along Came A Spider being a prime example, the genre has got to be running on fumes.

Silence of the Lambs started the ball rolling in making the genre viable again in 1990. The multiple Oscar winning classic created the template for numerous imitators, some successful – Seven comes to mind – most not. I mean, is it me or could The Watcher be the worst film to open at number one at the box office not counting a Steven Seagal or Pauly Shore movie? Can this genre be revived?

Scream turned the genre on it’s ear before running out of steam, the recent French wonder With A Friend Like Harry is more of a perverse Hitchcockian black comedy then a straight thriller, Hannibal’s class, wit and ghoulishly gruesome final barely camouflage a pedestrian (at best) plot structure and nothing on the horizon looks all that promising. Now with this Spanish disaster it’s clear that Americans are not the only ones running out of ideas when it comes to this topic. But with word that Red Dragon – the basis for Michael Mann’s superb Manhunter – is being remade, the $70 million dollar plus success of Along Came A Spider and word of other serial killer thrillers coming out soon it’s clear Hollywood still feels the genre can be viable, at least financially. The thing is, are there any writers or directors out there who can revitalize the genre creatively? I’m starting to wonder.

On that note, I’m curious what others think about this. Any thoughts or you just want to let me know what your favorites in the genre are, feel free to e-mail them in. The more interesting comments I might run in a future column.

Monday’s Highlights & Five Day Recap
Monday was a mixed bag. I had wanted very badly to see the Australian film Chopper but never made it to the screening. There is an airport shuttle van that rushes SIFF participants from venue to venue, but you can’t count on
it, Monday was no exception. With the morning movie, Larry Fessenden’s very Kubrickian horror thriller Wendigo, ending ten minutes late, the shuttle from Downtown up to Capitol Hill had already been and gone by the time I had made it outside. That was a bit depressing.

On the plus side, missing the shuttle forced me to stay downtown and take in Ferzan Ozpetek’s beautiful Ignorant Fairies. This is one of the top five or so films I’ve seen at SIFF and it boasted the best female performance of the
festival at this juncture from Margherita Buy. I guess missing the shuttle wasn’t so bad after all.

After five days and 25 films, I’d have to rate Brother as best of the festival Takeshi Kitano winning my praise as best director for the film as well. I’d have to go with either Jerzy Stuhr in A Week in the Life of Man or Josh Hartnett – yes, you read that right – of O for best actor. Best actress would have go to Buy and I’d have to give screenplay honors to either Alan Cummings and Jennifer Jason Leigh for The Anniversary Party or Brad Kaaya for O. I’ll report back next Tuesday on day 13 and let you know if anything changes.

Today’s – thankfully – a short day with only three films lined up. I’m definitely taking in Bernard Rapp’s A Matter of Taste this afternoon and Benny Chan’s Hong Kong action thriller Gen-X Cops is a must for this evening. Haven’t decided on what to see between the two, three of the four playing at 7:15 have my interest. Maybe I’ll just leave it in the hands of the shuttle – if I don’t miss.

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