Bella

Director: Alejandro Gomez Monteverde

Although infinitely preferable to the sexist and conservative rants of Dr. Phil, normally I wouldn’t advise trying to glean any wisdom on how to live one’s life from the heartbreaking oeuvre of Tennessee Williams. Despite this, there is definitely something to be said for Blanche DuBois’s memorable confession, “I have always depended on the kindness of strangers,” uttered in A Streetcar Named Desire. Not only do those words ring true more regularly than the evening news would have us believe in real life, but often they also provide a terrific springboard for creativity in the world of independent filmmaking.

From The Station Agent to Once, it seems as though we overwhelmingly gravitate towards stories in which our main character finds either their romantic or platonic soul mate in a complete stranger. Frequently this burgeoning appreciation echoes the events onscreen as audience members find themselves becoming an integral part of a steadily growing word-of-mouth movement that brings together film lovers from all backgrounds and walks of life to find truth, solace and consolation in the fact that this world is much smaller than we may think, with people who feel things in the same way as do we.

A beautiful cinematic realization of this sentiment can be found in writer/director Alejandro Gomez Monteverde’s feature film debut Bella which earned the 2006 People’s Choice Award at the Toronto International Film Festival, once again exemplifying the determination of filmgoers to seek out and reward works with which they identify. Primarily set during the course of one fateful New York day, save for a few wisely chosen flashes backwards and forwards in time, we encounter two employees of a restaurant who find a spark of recognition in one another.

When the pretty, young waitress Nina (Tammy Blanchard) is fired by domineering Manny (Manny Perez) after arriving late to work, despite the fact that they’re relative strangers, something in the girl’s eyes and manner speaks to Manny’s brother, the restaurant’s chef Jose (Eduardo Verastegui) who follows Nina to the subway where she reveals she is pregnant. Not wanting to leave her alone and equally drawn to her plight by the ghosts of his own tragic past which are revealed over the course of the film and refreshingly without predictability, Jose brings Nina to his family’s home.

Traditional narrative structure would have us believe that we’re watching a straightforward romance where Jose would chivalrously save the young woman from a tragic fate however just when you think you have it pegged, the film moves in another direction. Moreover, Monteverde’s intelligent screenplay and carefully chosen leads never let us forget that Jose needs Nina just as much as she needs him and Bella avoids becoming mired in a tired formula as the film evolves from a naturalistic romance to one where the romance isn’t simply to be found in the relationship between a man and a woman but one that celebrates genuine love between human beings, whether it’s classified as romantic, familial or platonic.

August Evening

Director: Chris Eska

Three years before the film earned the John Cassavetes Independent Spirit Award, writer/director/editor Chris Eska made his feature length debut with the production of August Evening back in 2005. Filmed in South Texas by the cinematographer Yasu Tanida who, instead of a resume, could simply submit this quietly hypnotic and breathtakingly beautiful film to any future job interview, Eska’s contemplative Malick and Ozu inspired drama centers on the relationship between Jamie (Spirit Award nominee Pedro Castaneda) an undocumented farm worker well into his nineties and Lupe, his young, fiercely loyal and long-widowed lovely daughter-in-law (played by newcomer Veronica Loren).

After Jamie’s beloved wife Maria dies just before her birthday and he’s soon forced into “retirement” from his undocumented labor intensive farm work, he and Lupe, who, preferring to look after Jamie, adamantly refuses any discussion she should marry another and move on with her life, venture out to stay with Jamie’s children while they look for work. The stark contrast between their simple life and the overly chaotic and varyingly self-involved lives of his two very different and grown children is noticed at once when they arrive at Victor’s home where, having suffered the brunt of a slowing economy in his job setting up LAN lines for companies, struggles to make ends meet for himself, his bitter wife and two rebellious sons. Seeking to extend hospitality, the proud Victor (Abel Becerra) borrows money and treats everyone to dinner where he and his wife take it upon themselves to try their hand at matchmaking Lupe with their hardworking butcher neighbor Luis (Walter Perez).

While Luis is at once taken with Lupe’s beauty, she repeatedly resists his advances but begins to have a change of heart shortly before she and Jamie move onto stay with Jamie’s wealthy, yuppie daughter (Sandra Rios). Rios, who has an unshakable icy emotional exterior, makes the most of a few choice lines that seem to hint at some past domestic drama that existed in her upbringing which may have, with more explanation, assisted in viewer sympathy for her overwhelmingly unlikable character.

Yet, the film, much to its credit, doesn’t settle for easy answers nor are there any big confrontational moments that bog it down into the realm of melodrama. Instead, it unfolds lazily (almost exceedingly so in desperate need of possibly a twenty minute cut from its 120 plus minute running time) like a warm, hazy, August evening. Featuring tremendous performances by the subtle leads Castaneda and Loren, for those with the patience and willingness to get (as producer Jason Wehling noted at its screening at the Phoenix Film Festival), "lost in" August Evening, you’ll find it is well worth the emotional investment.

Quiet City

Director: Aaron Katz

In my high school creative writing class, I annoyed my teacher at times with my tendency to avoid formal structure and compose what I thought were snapshot vignettes or short works which often consisted of two characters-- usually a man and a woman for a good balance-- whom I chased around a notebook with my pen and struggled to keep up with wherever they went.

Most of the time, I didn’t even bother giving them a name and only went with vague descriptions of their physical appearance just painting the two in broad strokes so the reader could feel free to imagine anyone they chose. In some ways, it was a rebellion against our mandated creative writing prompts that did little to inspire; simply put, I didn’t want to write a story about pirates and lost treasure, I wanted to write about humans interacting whether they were fighting or falling in love.

I eventually moved on to construct more concrete works with an actual beginning, middle and end (though not, as they say, necessarily in that order) as I continued on in college, but I still cherish tales about people who are searching for something and find another human being for better or worse. It’s this basic premise that seems to be at the heart of the low-budget, Do-It-Yourself “mumblecore” independent film movement that’s been getting increasingly popular with films by directors such as Andrew Bujalski, Joe Swanberg and others.

Nathan Rabin of The Onion cited the Danish filmmakers who broke the rules with their ten new commandments in the 90’s and the gloomy offshoot of alternative rock favored by Generation Y and labeled it a “Dogme-meets-emo subgenre,” in his review of one of the best mumblecore films so far, Quiet City. Like my maddening stories from high school, it begins with a woman who meets a stranger (again a man, for good balance) and soon we proceed to follow around the two characters for the entire running time, similar to Linklater’s Before Sunrise, except, I’ve neglected to mention that it’s at least twenty minutes in before we learn at least one of their names. That’s right, it’s the type of film that would have sent my poor creative writing teacher up the wall and one where nobody finds any lost treasure but just seeks out similarities and differences for discussion that occurs in roughly twenty-four hours of their lives.

When Atlanta native Jamie (Erin Fisher) arrives in New York to meet her flaky friend Samantha, she finds a mostly empty subway terminal and depends on the kindness of a fellow twenty-something stranger named Charlie (Cris Lankenau) to point her in the right direction of the café she’s supposed to find. As the two walk and talk, they fall into an easy conversation that is prolonged when Samantha who still hasn’t answered any of Jamie’s calls fails to show up. “If you want to hang out with me, my couch is open,” Charlie suggests and nervous laughter along with a frantic rechecking of phone messages follows before Jamie follows her female intuition and proceeds to crash with Charlie until she can track down her illusive friend.

The relaxed dialogue, penned by the director Aaron Katz and his lead actors, continues as they play a mini-keyboard, she cuts his hair and they drink his father’s gift of pinot noir out of coffee cups. Jamie falls asleep only to awaken worrying she’s overstayed her welcome and after asking if Charlie is sick of her, he reassures her that he has nothing else to do and “it’s a pleasant distraction" as they aimlessly walk and talk around New York city both admitting our generation’s tendency to “slink around” lazily as some would say as well as personify the fact that most of our successful friendships and relationships seem to be those that just blossom out of proximity and as little effort as possible. Turning their attention to the discussion of romantic relationships, they tackle a question that has been an increasingly popular topic of my friends and myself as we lament the fact that it’s hard to meet others and begin to wonder whether or not as we age our capacity to sustain a relationship increases or if people are just staying with others out of comfort and lack of ambition, sometimes making serious commitments to others for whom they may have settled.

Although it’s hardly all self-involved conversation—the title of Quiet City seems at once both paradoxical in its setting of the city that never sleeps but also quite appropriate in its hauntingly beautiful and artistic cinematography by Andrew Reed that Stephen Holden of The New York Times explained punctuates the film “with images of New York at twilight that cast a mood of reflective melancholy reminiscent of the loneliness at the heart of Edward Hopper paintings.” With some nods to Malick as we see shots of quiet and subtle beauty that fixate on empty streets and an ode to Godard as a group of characters dance to a most likely fast rock song but instead of the music, we hear the film’s score, Quiet City is proof that those who pompously say that there is no independent film are incorrect.

It’s gentle, honest, and earned festival awards across the country for its cinematography and direction as well as a prestigious nomination for the John Cassavetes Award at the 2008 Independent Spirit Awards. Perhaps indicative of Charlie’s wish that “we need to devise a plot to where we can basically do absolutely nothing and our bills get paid,” the talented director Aaron Katz has devised a way to make a film that on the surface seems basic and vague but at its heart is one that seems to represent its generation in a more authentic way than a large majority of movies coming out of the studio system.

While there are those who hate mumblecore on principle and at its worst, they have a terrific point, when one sees something like Quiet City, we’re grateful that as Katz was quoted on IMDb, “this is the first time, mostly because of technology that someone like me can go out and make a film with no money and no connections." And just think-- they didn’t even have to incorporate pirates or lost treasure in the process.