The Portland International Film Festival is underway.
Here's Shawn Levy's intro to The Oregonian's coverage of the fest.
Here are reviews of PIFF Week 1 films by The Oregonian's crit team. And here's my contribution to same:
'Mermaid'
Writer/director Anna Melikyan takes the dark fatalism of old-school fairy tales, marries it to "Amélie"-style quirk, and transplants the whole thing to modern Russia in this mostly charming (if abruptly ending) riff on Hans Christian Andersen's "Little Mermaid."
The film -- Russia's Foreign Language Oscar submission -- follows the troubled coming-of-age of non-mermaid Alisa (Masha Shalayeva). Conceived during a random beachside tryst, Alisa has the power to wish storms and other calamities into existence. The film starts in a wind-blasted Russian beach town and (after this arguably better half) makes its way to Moscow, where Alisa is destined to transform the life of a drunken, suicidal party boy who sells land plots on the Moon.
The movie's chief pleasures are Melikyan's confident direction and her sharp, offbeat visuals, which frame a terrific oddball performance by Shalayeva, whose face can morph from hard to beautiful to goofy in the space of five seconds. (Look at the trailer up there. You'll see what I mean.) My only (major) complaint -- without spoiling too much -- is that Alisa's cruel fairy-tale destiny revolves around saving a man maddeningly unworthy of her attention.
_____
B-minus; Russia; 115 minutes.
Plays at:
- 6:15 p.m. Friday, Feb. 6, Broadway Metroplex
- 6 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 10, Broadway Metroplex
- 8:45 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 10, Broadway Metroplex
PIFF coverage (The Oregonian, February 2009)
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