CIFF 2007: Day Three - Rails & Ties

Alison Eastwood

Director Alison Eastwood was on hand at AMC River East 21 for the Chicago International Film Festival's screening of of her directorial debut Rails & Ties, starring Kevin Bacon and Marcia Gay Harden as a married couple who have to cope with mortality and the appearance of a young boy whose life was shattered by an accident. A melodrama with a deranged-sitcom setup, the movie shows that Eastwood has inherited her father Clint's ability to work with actors, and the forced-family dynamics work as a result. Here's hoping Alison Eastwood gets her hands on a better script for her sophomore feature.

The movie opens on Oct. 26 in New York, LA and Toronto. A Chicago release date is TBD.

Screened:

Based on a novel by Mario Mendoza, which was based on the real Pozzetto Massacre in Bogotá, Colombia, in 1986, Satanás has a three-character structure that lulls you into a sense of -- not security -- but forgetfulness of its basis. The film follows a priest who lusts after a woman, a market-girl who becomes a swindler and an English tutor who yearns for his young student. Andrés Baiz' feature debut is nihilistic but with a purpose, and Damián Alcázar is chilling as the English professor with a military history. The film's climax is unnerving beyond description.

Satanás screens again on Monday, Oct. 15 @4:30 p.m. and Tuesday, Oct. 16 @ 9 p.m. Both showing are at Landmark's Century Centre Cinema.

Another feature debut is Pia Marais' The Unpolished (Die Unerzogenen) about a young girl and her gypsy family. A one-note affair, the movie constantly shows us how unhappy the 14-year-old girl (played by Ceci Schmitz-Chuh in a fine debut) is, whether she's longing for normalcy or realizing that normal life isn't all its cracked up to be.

The Unpolished screens again on Tuesday, Oct. 9 @ 6:45 p.m. and Wednesday, Oct. 10 @ 9 p.m. Both screenings are at Landmark.

Fans of naturalist drama might enjoy watching writer-director Jacques Nolot smoke cigarettes, drink coffee and write in a journal in Before I Forget (Avant que j'oublie), but when he's not doing those things, he's talking with his friends about the same things in his past over and over again. Nolot plays Pierre, a gay man in Paris who has been coping with HIV for 24 years, but the few scenes of Pierre dealing with his HIV infection don't equal an emotional connection to him or his endless recounting of the past.

Before I Forget screens again on Wednesday, Oct. 10 @ 4 p.m. at Landmark.

--Mark Dujsik