Arthouse round-up part one: The Peanut Butter Solution and Sleep Tight

There are varied films of note coming up at the Vancity Theatre and Pacific Cinematheque - I'll be posting about a couple of them here.

The Pacific Cinematheque's Cinema Sunday matinee for February 17th is a highly unusual Canadian film, The Peanut Butter Solution, ostensibly made for kids but perhaps better appreciated by adults. A friend of mine raves about it, as a truly unique and inventive piece of cinema; she lent me her VHS tape of it back when I actually had a functioning VHS player, and it sat on my shelf for nearly a year, with me never being quite convinced that I would like it. (The prospect of enduring a Celine Dion soundtrack was part of my reason for hesitating, but rest assured, back in 1985 - when the film was made - Dion was nowhere near as hard to take as she would later become; nor is her music excessively featured). I've finally caught up with the film, and while I don't know if I'm quite the fan said friend is, I can certainly see what she was getting at - the film is strange, surreal, and informed by all sorts of childhood tensions and traumas, as filtered through the logic of dreams. The story - or at least the first part of it - goes something like this: an eleven year old boy gives two homeless people change, and then hears (if I understood correctly) that they burned to death that very night in a fire in an abandoned home. He feels compelled to investigate, but what he sees when he peeks in the window frightens him so that it causes all his hair to fall out. His sister, who is trying to substitute for his absent mother, attempts to glue a hairpiece onto his head, to convince him that it is safe to go back to school, but this goes badly awry, and leads to schoolyard persecution and humiliation; thereafter, the ghosts of said homeless couple visit his house to steal groceries - it is not explained why ghosts need food, but they really are ghosts - and inform the child of a "solution" involving peanut butter (as well as nine spoonfuls of earth, five dead flies, and other magical ingredients) that will allow his hair to grow back. Alas, this also ends up having unforseen consequences, as he applies too much of the mixture to his head. Even worse, his young friend Conrad (Laotian-born Siluck Saysanasy), eager to grow pubic hair, applies some to his nether regions...

I'm really not sure what to make of The Peanut Butter Solution, but it certainly is acutely aware of the everyday traumas of childhood. Michael and his sister miss their Mom, and while they clearly love their painter Dad (zestfully played by Michael Hogan, best known on this blog as Bud Rickets in Clearcut), he seems a little bit too easygoing and a tad too disorganized to be a really effective parent; most of the children's problems have to be solved in trial-and-error fashion by the children themselves. The film also touches on anxieties about bullying, puberty, child abductions, and even the nature of work (since Michael ultimately ends up imprisoned in a sweatshop by their eccentric art teacher who has special uses for his hair). And of course (at least to a contemporary viewer) there's a definite echo of the fear of illness, since Michael with his bald head inevitably suggests a youthful cancer patient. None of this is made that explicit or scary - the film is meant as playful family fare - but The Peanut Butter Solution has at least as much Kafka in it as it does Dr. Seuss, and is aware that childhood is an anxious, confusing place, where kids don't necessarily feel they have the power to get along, and adults are not necessarily there to help. (There's even a "little girl do you want a ride" scene which likely seems far creepier today than it did in 1985). If it all sounds maybe a little dark - it is, but I kind of admire that; the film takes in aspects of human experience that simply don't make it into most family films these days, which generally offer mindless reassurance, silliness, and speak to innocence, rather than experience. The trailer can be seen here; Canuxploitation review here, which gives away some plot developments I've kept out of the above...

Incidentally, seeing Conrad's pubic hair, which eventually flows out of his pantlegs and trails behind him as he walks, reminded me of my own unfortunate experiments trying to mask the scent of my newly pubescent crotch - which was making me self-conscious in gym class - by dousing it with my father's aftershave. Note to any eleven year olds reading this: this is a bad idea.

If The Peanut Butter Solution may not be smooth viewing for all children, the Spanish thriller Sleep Tight, playing at the Vancity Theatre on February 23rd and 28th, might be too much for some adults: it's a harrowing portrait of perversity, voyeurism, and human evil, directed by Jaume Balagueró - one half of the team behind the [REC] films, though not the half that just directed the ill-received [REC]3. The film is quite unlike that franchise - the [REC] movies are fast paced, noisy, maximalist movies that constantly startle and stimulate, while Sleep Tight has some of the same chilly sensibility that informed the well-received Euro-thriller Revanche, a few years ago; it's as intense as [REC], but in a cold, cruel fashion, with tension building slowly, the more we learn about the main character, Cesar. Cesar is played by Luis Tosar (above), looking a bit like a cross between Elias Koteas and Boris Karloff; he's the concierge at an apartment building, and works hard to present an affable, easygoing exterior, but he harbours some very dark secrets. I'm hesitant to say more, since part of the pleasure of the film is that we are initially seduced into liking this character along with his tenants, and then, once we are hooked into identifying with him, are dragged along on quite a creepy voyage, as his true nature becomes apparent. I utterly loved it - but I'm fascinated by intimate portraits of damaged, dangerous people...

Bearing in mind that I recommend reading no more about the film - just trust me and go see it, without even finishing this paragraph! - I feel obliged to mention that Sleep Tight reminded me of a few other texts, all also excellent: Richard Matheson's short story "The Distributor," which has a sadist, hostile to the suburban bliss of his neighbours, set them against each other with subtle acts of sabotage; various Jim Thompson novels (The Killer Inside Me, for instance) where the main character, driven by inner demons, manipulates a friendly, obliging external appearance so he can get away with greater and greater acts of perversity; and a recent - and rather good - Hammer Studios production called The Resident, in which Jeffrey Dean Morgan plays a landlord who seems at first like a really nice guy to his female tenant (Hilary Swank) - but whose nocturnal pastimes resemble Cesar's. Sleep Tight goes even further than The Resident in encouraging us to identify with the bad guy; it's a morally uncomfortable film to watch, but few types of films are as psychologically rich as morally uncomfortable horror, especially when themes of voyeurism are at work. To my mind, Sleep Tight is not-to-be-missed.