Month: October 2009

It’s been said that roller derby is a cross between a sorority and a
gang. But in Whip It, the directorial debut of Drew Barrymore,
roller derby is both a family and an escape from family.

As a producer, Barrymore has created films that feature quirky
characters, strong female leads, and cute love stories. The only
difference is that Whip It is a cute romance between a quirky
girl and the sport she loves (and the other women who love it,
too).

Bliss Cavendar (Ellen Page) is a reluctant pageant girl from a small
town outside Austin. She works at a barbecue restaurant with her best
and only friend, Pash (Alia Shawkat, “Maeby” from Arrested
Development) and longs for the day she can leave Bodeen, Texas,
behind her.

On a shopping trip to Austin, she discovers the roller derby, a
world full of badass chicks and cute boys. Bliss unearths her Barbie
roller skates and, despite being in high school, lies about her age and
sneaks off to become a derby girl.

Based on a novel by derby girl Shauna Cross, Whip It does a
good job straddling the expectations of the derby audience and what it
needs to appeal to the rest of the audience.

I’ve been involved in derby in some capacity for more than three
years, so I’m well versed in the source material. Whip It gets
most of the details exactly right: former figure skaters turned derby
girls, the skeezy guy fans, and girls comparing bruises at parties.

Derby fans might wince when Bliss ultimately joins derby over a cute
boy or that the film’s hits aren’t exactly what you’d call regulation
for flat-track derby. But for the uninitiated, it gets the camaraderie,
the athleticism, and the importance of the sport to the women who play
it completely right.

The only off-note is perhaps Barrymore’s own character, Smashley
Simpson, the film’s running sight gag and most violent skater. There
are real-life skaters who are quick to retaliate a real — or
imagined — foul with an intentional trip or even a punch,
but they generally aren’t free-spirited, happy-go-lucky hippies.

The rest of the actors are well cast in this heart-warming comedy:
Page can deadpan with the best of them, but it’s refreshing to see her
play a character with more vulnerability and warmth.

Daniel Stern is her somewhat oblivious but doting dad, and though
the story rests on the female relationships, it’s the chemistry between
Stern and Page that makes the whole thing work.

Kristen Wiig is perfect as team captain, adoring mom, and mother
figure Maggie Mayhem. And Juliette Lewis is all lanky, feral
malevolence as Bliss’ arch-enemy, Iron Maven.

Because when it comes down to it, you might join derby for the
sport, but you stay for the people.

The lowlifes and bottom-feeders in Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne’s
fine if taxing crime film Lorna’s Silence do not behave like
traditional movie characters. They are puzzling, frustrating,
inscrutable — and best handled as discrete collections of body
parts rather than as functioning, goal-oriented protagonists and
antagonists. Surface is all: A drug addict’s taut forearm muscles, a
hustler’s bald spot, and a mail-order bride’s flat chest register on
screen with a kind of limpid clarity seldom granted to the faces and
bodies of the starriest Hollywood stars. The shoulders, profiles, and
backs of heads in Lorna’s Silence are more weirdly expressive
than the perfectly lit, shallow-focus close-ups typical of major studio
filmmaking.

The Dardennes’ insistence on their characters’ corporeality is
necessary early on, because the people in the film remain stubbornly
opaque for the first hour. Consider Lorna, played by Arta Dobroshi.
Dobroshi may look like Ellen Page’s androgynous, beaten-down sister,
but she’s far less expressive and open — in fact, she’s so
skilled at draining her face of emotion that even after the story kicks
in, it’s never clear what forces send her through her day. Her husband
Claudy (Jérémie Renier) — whom she treats like an
unwelcome, irksome roommate — is, in spite of his shaking,
quavering requests, just as mysterious.

After some raw exchanges between this makeshift couple, we discover
that Lorna’s tense cohabitation with Claudy is just the first part of a
crude, crass scheme designed to exploit her new status as a European
citizen and potential mail-order bride. However, as the scheme
progresses Lorna — to her (and our) shock — discovers that
she cannot behave as mercilessly as her criminal co-conspirators; a
sudden, careless act of compassion simultaneously focuses her emergent
spiritual crisis and puts her in grave danger.

While not as forceful or exciting as 2005’s L’Enfant,
Lorna’s Silence reaffirms the Dardennes’ important status as
global filmmakers (with U.S. distribution — hooray!) whose art
addresses the damaging effects of unchecked market forces on human
compassion. Their conclusions are seldom comforting or easy to parse,
and the Dardennes’ fluid handheld camerawork reinforces their
characters’ trapped and desperate circumstances. (By the way, isn’t it
nice to see a filmmaker use a handheld camera to capture intimate
moments instead of using it as a tool to manufacture intensity?) But
flashes of hope and beauty crop up from time to time — the
vibrant yellows and blues of a phone booth, a bicycle ride through the
streets, a breathless account of a potential snack-bar space.

The problematic ending is equal parts urban legend and fairy-tale
wish fulfillment, but overall the strongest passages in the film
express a feeling of deferred religious grace comparable to the
uncompromising chronicles of despair found in Flannery O’Connor’s
crueler short stories.

Voting has closed on the Indie Memphis Late-Night Movie Contest, and
the winner is The Big Lebowski. The Coen brothers’ cult comedy
will be shown on the big screen at the Levitt Shell in Overton Park on
Friday, October 9th, as part of an Indie Memphis program that will
start with Elvis Presley’s 1968 “comeback” television special and
include the Memphis Music at SXSW documentary.

Among the five candidates that were open to public voting,
Lebowski won big, garnering 38 percent of the vote. The
runners-up were Shaun of the Dead (22 percent), Dazed and
Confused (17 percent), and Monty Python & the Holy Grail
(17 percent). Caddyshack trailed with 6 percent of the vote.

The Big Lebowski will screen at roughly 10 p.m., after the
music docs. Admission is free. In the event of inclement weather, the
screening will be rescheduled for Friday, October 16th. See IndieMemphis.com for more info.