La Mujer de Mi Hermano

I find it hard to review foreign movies. They are so… foreign.

La Mujer de Mi Hermano (My Brother’s Woman) was filmed in Mexico. Interestingly enough, the house our hero and heroine live in has been featured in one of the architectural magazines I read. But that’s an interesting diversion. The film is like a lot of European films—slow and plodding but full of meaning and pathos. It was a long 93 minutes.

The synopsis goes like this: After almost 10 years of marriage, the stunningly attractive Zoe (pronounced Zo-eh) realizes that her marriage to the stunningly attractive Ignacio no longer carries the passion and spark it once had. Boy, I’ll say! Whether it was intentional or not, these two must be the best looking total bores in all of Mexico. Zoe finds herself in the stunningly unattractive arms of Ignacio’s brother, Gonzalo. Gonzalo is a struggling artist (no surprise here) who is the black sheep of the family. He is marked so by his black fingernails, the victims of liberal amounts of black paint in his art.

The sets are fantastic; Zoe and Ignacio are perfect—clothes, hair, makeup. Even the home they live in has clean lines and lots of light. The right angles of the home suit Ignacio’s practiced image to perfection. Gonzalo lives in comparative squalor. He lives for sex and dissipation, neither of which satisfy him. His remedy is to keep trying to get these two things to finally work. His apartment is the biggest victim of his lifestyle.

The habits of life begin to wane in importance as Zoe finds herself in need of a baby. Most of her life with Ignacio has been blessed by wealth due to Ignacio’s headship of his father’s business. As they don’t have any children, it only stands to reason that Zoe’s biological clock is beginning to chime the birthing hour. Conversations with family and friends discuss the couple’s unfortunate dual sterility. The Church plays a large and unapologetic role in the lives of Ignacio and Zoe. I imagine it is so with most all Latin American families. The Church is actually a character in the film.

Their priest does all he can. So does Gonzalo. That’s were the trouble starts. As the marriage dissolves, Zoe confides in the Church for solace. Since the Church can’t do much for her Gonzalo easily seduces her.

Gonzalo, it turns out, has a motive to destroy the marriage. He hates his brother Ignacio. The family's past has ruined Gonzalo’s life as well as his art. We find out why he is the black sheep. We find out why Ignacio and Zoe cannot have children. We discover that Zoe is not as sterile as she thought. Nor is she as passionless as we thought. The Church appears to be unprepared for the consequences of this bad marriage and illicit affair. We also see that Gonzalo ruins not only Ignacio but Zoe and himself. Ironically, the only souls that find redemption are Zoe and Ignacio.

La Mujer de Mi Hermano bills itself as a sexy and dramatic story. It may be sexy, but it is anything but passionate. It is dramatic, and deadly serious. Despite the gorgeous actors, the characters they play only illustrate the emptiness of longing for nothing beyond your own desires, while hiding your true self from others.

Spiritually thinking, La Mujer tells it like it is: Unhappy people don’t always suddenly find happiness. Sometimes they have to make compromises that might do nothing but mute the misery. Ignacio shows himself to be a good man. He stands up for Zoe in her time of greatest need. He has the wherewithal and the resources to take care of her. Despite his miserable life of secrets he at least has the gumption to take responsibility for his actions. He does love her. He just can’t be passionate about her. He shows more love for her by his actions than by words. Many of us wouldn’t do this. Often we spend our time in prayer to the Lord asking for bail. When he doesn’t respond our way, we feel “led� to take matters into our own hands.

Ignacio could have done all this. He has the money, the looks, even the permission in his culture to discard his unfaithful wife. He chooses not to. Because he has finally come clean with who he really is, he is able to sacrifice his needs for the greater good of someone else. Ignacio finds himself and is both liberated and self-constrained by his selfless choice to stay with Zoe.

Gonzalo, on the other hand, whose life Ignacio ruined, can’t reconcile responsibility for himself. Ignacio takes the entire burden of these three pitiful lives and Gonzalo basks in the delusion that he’s once again escaped responsibility.

One wonders by the end of the film just how responsible Gonzalo was for his life choices. But there is no question in the filmmaker's mind that he still has a chance to respond in a constructive way. But old habits die hard.

Hoot

Hoot is a Hoot!

I had the unexpected pleasure of previewing the new movie Hoot in its native Florida on March 31st. I will try to restrain myself from droning on and on about how beautiful Florida is. You can see for yourself on the World Wide Web. The weather is terrific (between hurricanes) and the lifestyle is simultaneously laid back and pretentious. And it’s important to understand the lifestyle of Florida in order to better appreciate the movie Hoot.

But first, I must digress. One of the most difficult aspects of reviewing a movie, in my opinion, is the necessity of crediting the talent of the film without disrupting the flow of the opinion. So let me preface my review by noting that the cast of this film is terrific. Director Wil Shriner and Producer Jimmy Buffett gathered a cast of truly talented friends and stars to make this film. So if I don’t give them due justice later, here are the kudos, right up front.

Producer Jimmy Buffet is, by all accounts, the prototypical Floridian. Keen to produce his very first motion picture, Buffett remarks that “I’m always looking for something that can be entertaining for adults who like to take their children to movies. As a father myself, I’m always learning something new from my kids every day. I’m a grownup who still possesses the heart of a child or a schoolboy. When I read this, I thought this was something unique because Carl’s writing can be enjoyed by adults as well as kids. I was an old Rocky and Bullwinkle fan. Also Beanie and Cecil. Cartoons that had a little bit of satire that were written by adults for adults, but were also funny for kids. I’m also an old Travis McGee and Elmore Leonard fan, guys like Carl who write about the unusual culture of South Florida. As a writer myself, I tried to emulate those guys in some ways. It all made for a good story. That's what I saw in Hoot.�

Hoot is delightfully faithful to the novel of the same name by Carl Hiaasen. Director/Screenwriter Wil Shriner did a masterful job of bringing the story to the screen with minimal alterations. Not an easy task, it would seem, considering the large number of films that barely follow the outlines of the stories on which they are ostensibly based.

The main character in the film, Roy Eberhardt (Logan Lerman), is a recent transplant to Florida from his beloved Montana. His run-in with a local bully by the (rather unfortunate) name of Dana Matherson (Eric Phillips) brings him into contact with “Mullet Fingers� (convincingly played by Cody Linley), the as-yet-undiscovered vandal. Roy doesn’t know anything about him and is fascinated by the boy who can outrun the school bus, but apparently doesn’t go to school.

At the center of the story is the development of some precious Florida real estate in the fictional town of Coconut Cove. (Why there isn’t a real Coconut Cove in Florida by now is its own surprise.) The “evil� developer is the innocuous and subversively named “Mother Paula’s Pancake House.� Yep, that’s right. You thought pancakes were the great American breakfast. Au contraire, ye-who-think-all-is-well-in-America’s-mealtime! What you do see is that this particular pancake restaurant consists of 99 franchises in and around the southeastern part of the U.S. And Coconut Cove is to be number 100! A great milestone in pancakedom! Unfortunately, the site chosen for the landmark pancake house is also home to an adorable parliament of Burrowing Owls (Athene cunicularia). The evil perpetrator of this senseless development is none other than the overly ambitious Vice President of Operations Chuck Muckle (Clark Gregg) and his hapless and surprisingly inept Construction Foreman Leroy “Curlie� Branitt (Tim Blake Nelson). Conflict arises when the construction site is vandalized by an unknown but devious person (or persons) on a daily, (or, more accurately, nightly) basis.

There are several subplots in this deceptively simple novel. I mention the novel here because Wil Shriner has done a fantastic job of being true to the storyline of the book. Honestly, this movie is the novel—not just a story based on it. I really appreciate this. One subplot consists of the unknown vandal of the construction site, and how Roy and a couple of his friends become entwined with this hooligan throughout the narrative—with comical but important consequences.

Hoot contains numerous great character actors, including Luke Wilson and Tim Blake Nelson. Other big names are Robert Wagner (Mayor), Jessica Caulfield (Mother Paula), and Kiersten Warren as Roy’s mom. It’s a great cast and a fun story.

Issues such as the importance of family, friends, sincerity, respect, and care for helpless creatures are all addressed, but not overblown. The only downfall of the movie is the necessity of compression. Visual art can only deal with so many thematic levels in a two-hour movie. Like I said before, the movie is very faithful to the book, but the book has some substantial additional themes centered around Roy’s family, teachers, friends, and enemies that cannot be explored adequately in the film. So read the book, too!

The motion picture has more than just an environmental message. (Note: no one affiliated with the movie has any subversive enviro-terrorist leanings.) They realize the inevitability of the shrinking wild habitats of Florida. The central purpose conveyed to me in interviews with Director Wil Shriner, who was raised in Florida, as well as others involved in making the film (including author Carl Hiassen) was a hope to recreate the Florida they remember before it is gone.

I took away a few reflections from this film. Many of us are protective of our families and friends, believing that controlling our immediate environment is all that matters in this world. But there is a big beautiful world out there that needs protection. This film makes a penetrating statement: that there is a need to consider the downside of “progress.� The age of the Baby Boomer coupled with the wealthy and mobile nature of American society has built Florida into long lines of high-rise condos, hotels, and enormous residences along the fragile coastline. How many more condos and hotels do we need on the beaches of Florida?

Counter to that important message, though, is the fallacy of this film: that lines can be drawn separating which creatures are important enough that humans and other species must suffer for their protection. In a sense, a bit of an environmental terrorism message is delivered. I don’t believe that is the right message. The sentiment is sound: “think before you dig.� After all, is it that important to have a pancake restaurant so far from the downtown area? Why not buy the land and donate it to the owls’ preservation, and build your restaurant in town? The Floridians would love you, and you can protect the owls because they are on your property. I’ll wager too, that the owls were just as much at risk on public land as they were in the path of a private bulldozer. But isn’t there a better way? Scripture tells us that the whole earth is subject to degradation. But we are also to be the stewards of the planet. Quite frankly, I don’t have the answers either. We should allow people to live where they want. Or eat pancakes where they like. However, I wish more of us thought through the consequences of our actions before we blindly built our dream homes, or retired to Florida so life will be more pleasant for us.

No one involved in the making of this film advocates the type of vandalism exhibited in the film. Their main goal was to show the beauty of Florida, as it was and still can be. Point taken.

A Hoot of a Press Tour

I sit at a large round table with several other journalists. We are a willing audience for Wil Shriner, the brilliant director and writer of the new movie Hoot, produced by Jimmy Buffett. We sit around and talk about old TV shows, standup comedy, movies we’ve seen and movies we’d like to see. We joke we laugh and listen to some of what may end up being Wil Shriner’s next stand-up comedy routine.

Every school has a guy like him, a really smart kid that is a cut-up and still runs circles around the rest of the students mentally. But he’s also very approachable. We are at this meeting to talk about his new movie, but one thing leads to another, and we end up in a share-your-childhood kind of a conversation. We try to cut to the chase and learn a few interesting tidbits about the making of Hoot—things like how well everyone got along. The egos were kept in check. (May have been the heat.) Hoot was filmed in Florida. Wil is from Florida and is making his permanent home their again.

Two impressive things occur to me. Making this movie was like any other business idea. Some friends got together for lunch one day—namely, Jimmy Buffet and Carl Hiassen, the author of Hoot. Over lunch they decided they wanted to make a movie of this book. They thought ,who do we know that could direct it? “Say; I have a friend, Wil Shriner, he’s from Florida too. I’d bet he’d like to do it.� So another lunch was arranged. A chain reaction of seemingly innocuous lunches and dinners ensued and the remaining producers, actors and musicians were assembled. It wasn’t quite like that; the order may be a bit different. But as we heard Shriner tell it, forming the group was as effortless as forming a pickup basketball game.

But that is probably the way it is in his circles. That’s the way it is in mine. The outcomes are different in my circles. But it sounded familiar.

The other impressive thing: Besides Wil Shriner, we speak with talented actress and singer Brie Larson and her costar Cody Linley. They play brother and sister in the film, and are great friends in real life. Everyone involved in the making of this film speaks of the enthusiastic respect they have for the others, regardless of their role in the film. Cody claims he’ll always be involved in film in one way or another. He likes being behind the camera as well as in front of it. He was impressed by the professionalism of the set guys and make-up people, the people we never see. Perhaps it was rehearsed or planned, but Brie said the same things about this production. “Everyone seemed to be having a great time.�

Cody Linley is very candid about his role in the movie. He is happy he got to play this part. He also emphatically does not condone eco-terrorism. I thought the question about it was loaded, but he was ready for it. He said, “The overall theme of the film is protecting species when you can, and preserving the environment if possible.�

There are often options to building or expanding into certain areas that might be less obvious unless you have the attitude of preservation or love of God’s creation. All three hate to see the shrinking wildlands in Florida. It seems to them a foregone conclusion that much of what Florida was is gone. They hope to preserve its memory through Hoot. Who says you can’t have a little fun at the same time? But the environmental message is by no means mean-spirited or militant. Hoot seems to ask: “Any chance you could look before you leap on this project?�

Brie Larsen makes an additional appeal to her fans: She feels strongly, as evidenced in her music, that girls her age need encouragement to be themselves. It’s important to confide in their friends and parents to be all they can. She surprisingly doesn’t like to wear makeup. (Oh, to be sixteen and beautiful.) But she has a good point. She feels that an over-emphasis on personal beauty is hurtful to many of her friends and co-sixteeners.

She also has an interesting answer when she is asked about her career plans. She says she hates filming TV—even though that is where she first met Wil Shriner (Raising Dad, with Bob Saget), but she is no sentimental fool. She works hard but thinks the network sit-com game is not for her. She is in the middle of another movie but wants to be selective about what she does in the future. She wants to pursue her music and make some more films.

All in all, both Cody Linley and Brie Larson exhibit great maturity and high intelligence. I enjoy their company. We later share lunch in a hotel suite and these two sophisticated and talented kids start a pillow fight. Refreshingly, they are still sixteen, and none too stuffy either.