VIFF Notes: Gabrielle Rose, City Lens, Room 237, The Shining

It's kind of funny, after the list of people I've interviewed and interacted with - including larger-than-life figures like Lemmy Kilmister, Annie Sprinkle, and Michael Gira - when I still find myself intimidated by someone. I find I'm kind of shy about talking to Gabrielle Rose. Part of it may be the intense roles she's played - try Atom Egoyan's The Adjuster on sometime, or Speaking Parts, both of which have sexy and unsettling moments - and part of it may be that at VIFF conferences (at which I've seen her twice) she has a bit of a glamorous, inapproachable aura about her; or maybe it's just that I haven't ever had the excuse of being media to back up my approach (because as tiresome as journalists can be, most people you interview generally welcome the attention). All the same, I've always WANTED to speak to her, but been too nervous to attempt it. However, after a very well-received screening of The Crimes of Mike Recket yesterday, and a Q&A session featuring her, the film's producer, and some of her co-stars, I found myself quite accidentally walking up the aisle of The Vogue theatre beside her, and *she* began a conversation with *me,* so I really had nowhere to run: I swallowed my nerves and confessed to her that (ulp) she was my favourite Canadian actress, and that I greatly admired the brave roles she's taken on. She was quite modest in her reply, but I mean it: she's been willing to take on characters that are extremely unflattering (like the school bus driver in The Sweet Hereafter), has been made highly vulnerable and subject to on-screen humiliation (including in the new Bruce Sweeney film, but also in Speaking Parts - the image of her holding a gun to her head at the climax of that film is one of the most indelible moments in Canadian cinema, for me), has played everything from a nattering, controlling Mom worthy of a Woody Allen movie (in Sweeney's Excited) to however-you-want to describe her character, Mimi, in The Adjuster (perverse performance artist? ...The scene on public transit with Maury Chaykin, RIP, as a collaborator of hers, dressed as a stinky bum who places his hand between her legs, is ANOTHER of the most indelible images in Canadian cinema). While others of our actresses (Molly Parker, Jackie Burroughs) have taken on daring roles, they seldom have been willing to shed themselves of glamour in the way that Ms. Rose has; she's able to bring you very close to a fragile human core, without regard for self-protection or considerations outside the performance at hand, and I think she deserves credit for her gutsiness! (Hell, there's even a brief moment in The Crimes of Mike Recket where Gena Rowlands in A Woman Under the Influence comes to mind). I've only seen a small sampling of her work - she's had a long, busy career! - but she's just great in The Crimes of Mike Recket, as is, of course, Nicholas Lea (still likely best known as Krycek from The X-Files). Anyhow, I think she may have expected me to continue my conversation with her - I may have fled somewhat abruptly from The Vogue, after our brief interaction - but chalk it up to fannish nerves. Maybe someday I'll have the excuse to talk to her as media, who knows?

Truth is, I was very glad to make the VIFF at all this week - I was sick through last weekend and missed screenings of both the new Vinterberg and the new Haneke. (The Vinterberg film, The Hunt, about what happens to a man suspected of pedophilia, will be playing the Vancity Theatre on the 14th, 15th, and 17th as a VIFF repeat; Haneke's Amour screens on the 12th, but I'll be doing an interview that day). In addition to seeing Sweeney's film theatrically yesterday, I caught City Lens, screening again October 12th, which I interview Graham Peat about below. It's definitely interesting, but the best film in this program of Vancouver-themed shorts from the CBC archives is not the one I expected: "The Outsider" gives the fullest portrait of late 1950's Vancouver, which is startlingly recognizable, and has what appears to be an authentic narration from a youth who has had trouble with the law; stylistically it combines elements of social realism with film noir, depicting the narrator wandering the city. I'd expected the never-before-seen short "The Seeds" to be the most exciting of the films, based on the description, but its portrait of juvenile delinquents running amuck is quite kitschy and cliched compared to "The Outsider" - though it does have its audacious moments, cinematically, and a lively jazz score by someone whose name, I noted, begins with "Allan Mac" (MacIntosh? MacIntyre? I only recall that it wasn't "MacInnis"). The other two short subjects are interesting, if less exciting; the first in the program, which offers static shots of details of Vancouver architecture, features some startling gargoyles that I assume no longer exist here, alongside a couple that you'll recognize...

Several films playing over the next couple of days sound exciting, but one screening tomorrow (that is, Thursday) may lure me into the city again: Room 237, a documentary in which different film scholars look at The Shining. While finding Rob Ager's analysis of the film on Youtube fascinating and compelling, The Shining is a film I've had in quarantine for years, after I decided that Kubrick was a misogynist, largely based on what he does to Shelley Duvall in that film, but also on evidence scattered throughout his career: his truly hateful femme fatale in The Killing, his loathing for Shelly Winters in Lolita, the glee he takes in some of the rape scenes in A Clockwork Orange, and the very strange male-bonding-via-female-murder that closes Full Metal Jacket. As usual, my 40's find me revisiting and sometimes revising the blanket judgements I made in my 20's and 30's; since I can't be sure I'll be able to attend the upcoming screening of The Shining at the Vancity Theatre, I looked at the film the other night on DVD, and found myself compelled by how much it contextualizes and queries its anti-feminism, and how fruitful it might be - regardless of the indiginities visited upon Ms. Duvall - as a subject of feminist analysis. I still think there's something highly uncomfortable about the film, particularly when we're encouraged by Duvall's abased cringing to IDENTIFY with the desire to brutalize her - but these scenes may serve a larger and more moral purpose than I'd previously credited them as serving. Don't think I'd seen the film in 15 years, and am very glad I revisited it, and am really curious to see where the analyses in Room 237 lead; if nothing else, it will be interesting to see a film entirely devoted to the exegesis of another film! Read Adrian Mack on the film - he's actually seen it, unlike me - here; and if you want to prepare yourself for one of the further-out-there interpretations of the film discussed in Room 237, check this short documentary about how The Shining contains Kubrick's encoded confession that he helped fake the Apollo 11 moon landings...