Times Colonist movie writer Michael D. Reid is covering the Victoria Film Festival, which continues until Feb. 12. Ratings are out of five stars. Go to timescolonist.com/entertainment/film-festival for updates.
What: The Prison in Twelve Landscapes
Where: Capitol 6
When: Tuesday, 9:15 p.m.; Feb. 9, 6:30 p.m.
Rating: four stars
Mass incarceration in the U.S. isn’t just a distressing epidemic that reflects a litany of problems plaguing our southern neighbours, from rampant racism to economic crises and the country’s obsession with guns: It’s a growth industry. New York-based Canadian filmmaker Brett Story artfully and with lack of moral judgment explores this sad reality without showing a prison until the film’s final frames. She matter-of-factly acknowledges incarceration is “recession-proof,” in the words of a resident of an eastern Kentucky town that benefits economically from penitentiaries that have replaced shutdown coal mines. But Story is more concerned with human impact. This is evident early on, as we hear a Kentucky radio station broadcasting loving messages to inmates from loved ones, and observe women and children boarding an overnight bus in Manhattan for the long ride to the Attica Correctional Facility in upstate New York for a visit. She also humanizes inmates with compelling input from an elderly, philosophical African-American ex-convict who spends his days playing chess with strangers in Washington Square, and a Marin County inmate who embraces putting out forest fires as part of her sentence. This isn’t a polemical treatise on social injustice, however, although it inevitably makes its way to Ferguson, Missouri. Indeed, it gets your blood boiling once you hear an infuriating story of racial bias voiced by a black woman who was threatened with incarceration in a horrible prison environment if she didn’t pay an exorbitant fine for failing to secure a garbage-can lid. It’s one of many fascinating tales that contribute to a thought-provoking tapestry.
What: Old Stone
Where: SilverCity
When: Tonight, 9 p.m.; Feb. 11, 6:30 p.m.
Rating: four stars
Chinese-Canadian filmmaker Johnny Ma makes a dazzling feature debut with this taut, thoughtful 80-minute thriller about an upstanding small-town Chinese cabbie who learns that doing the right thing can be hazardous to your health, wallet and relationships. Equal parts satire, morality tale and noirish suspenser, this gripping, briskly paced yarn charts the predicament of Lao Shi (Chen Gang), the protagonist who, after a drunken passenger causes him to hit a motorcyclist, drives the unconscious victim to the hospital when an ambulance fails to show. A bureaucratic nightmare ensues as this trusting Good Samaritan is suddenly saddled with the comatose victim’s hospital bills, and reprimanded by law enforcement, insurance company representatives and his employer for failing to follow standard procedure. He also incurs the wrath of his wife for how he’s spending their savings. Amid the mounting chaos and danger as he resorts to desperate measures, this cynicism-laced film has much to say about the erosion of compassion in an increasingly institutional society.
What: Merci Patron! (Thanks Boss!)
Where: Vic Theatre
When: Wed., 9 p.m., Feb. 11, 4 p.m.
Rating: three stars
Ostensibly inspired by Michael Moore’s Roger & Me, playfully irreverent French activist Francois Ruffin takes aim at Bernard Arnault, the controversial billionaire CEO of LMVP, the luxury goods conglomerate whose brands include Dom Perignon, Moet & Chandon, Christian Dior and Kenzo, and his questionable business practices that have ruined lives. Ruffin fulfils his mission by cheerfully conspiring with Serge and Jocelyn Klur, two unemployed textile workers whose jobs were outsourced to cheaper labour in eastern Europe years after Arnault’s acquisition of Boussac, a holding company. Ruffin helps the couple who figure they have nothing to lose to fight back by threatening to tell their story to the media unless Arnault pays them thousands of dollars and helps them find employment. It’s a sketchy, in some ways dangerously deceptive stunt that nevertheless prompts LMVP executives to dispatch a security chief to broker a deal and protect the company’s image. The “negotiations,” captured with hidden cameras and microphones, turn this into as much of a thriller as an activist documentary, with Ruffin deftly deploying tongue-in-cheek humour to convey his serious message about the human cost of corporate greed.
