MOVIE-MAKING MOVIES
Three new films look behind the camera
By Andy Klein
Torremolinos 73 is set during the waning years of the Franco regime in Spain. Alfredo Lopez (Javier Cámara) is a hard-working schnook, who peddles encyclopedias door-to-door. His product - The Illustrated Encyclopedia of the Spanish Civil War - was apparently a hot item once upon a time. But sales are shrinking, and so is the staff of Montoya Publishers.
After 15 years, he's in danger of being downsized, but his boss (Juan Diego) offers him a reprieve: The company hopes to stay afloat by collaborating with a Danish company on the so-called World Audiovideo Encyclopedia of Reproduction. The Spaniards will supply documentary "audiovideo records" of their culture's mating rituals, i.e., dirty movies. Despite the euphemisms, everyone understands what's up, but no one is impolite enough to be explicit about it.
Alfredo and his wife, Carmen (Candela Peña) - part of the struggling middle class and edging into middle age - are reluctant, but their financial situation leaves them no alternative. After all, no one will ever know: Under Franco, such films are forbidden, and the material will only be distributed in Scandinavia.
Predictably, Alfredo and Carmen quickly develop an enthusiasm for their work. In their onscreen romps, they reveal a level of sexuality they never knew they had; and Alfredo, also functioning as writer-director, falls in love with filmmaking.
They are raking in the money, but Alfredo begins to have auteurial dreams. He discovers "serious" cinema, in particular Ingmar Bergman. He pens his own script - full of direct lifts from The Seventh Seal and Wild Strawberries, with a touch of Fellini as well - and amazingly finds the backing to make it.
This feature debut from Pablo Berger is sweet and enjoyable, albeit as slender and forgettable as they come. There is something touching about Alfredo's love of cinema, even if he isn't quite bright enough to realize how derivative and hackneyed his masterpiece is. The film's greatest asset is Cámara, best known to American audiences as the lovesick nurse in Pedro Almodóvar's Talk to Her. Sort of a Spanish equivalent of French actor Michel Blanc, he has the open, naive face of a silent comedian, which makes him both instantly likable and automatically funny.
By coincidence, another import about a cinema-obsessed schnook is opening this week. In Italian director Davide Ferrario's After Midnight, Giorgio Pasotti plays Martino, the night watchman at the huge Mole Antonelliana - the National Museum of Cinema in Turin. Martino also seems to channel the silent comedians ... to the extent that he barely talks anymore. Living in a room in the museum and spending his nights watching old movies, he never goes out except to frequent a local fast-food joint.
Every night he orders the same thing, and every night he throws it out, uneaten. All he really cares about is catching a glimpse of Amanda (Francesca Inaudi), who works the counter. He is completely smitten and completely incapable of making his feelings known. He passively watches Amanda go off with her irresponsible, car-thief boyfriend, Angel (Fabio Troiano).
But one night Amanda gets in trouble with the cops, and Martino offers her sanctuary in the museum. Exposed to his gentle life, she slowly but surely begins to see the beautiful soul beneath the geeky exterior, even when he reveals that she is the unwitting star of a silent movie he has been filming on the sly.
After Midnight is slightly more substantial than Torremolinos 73, but not much. At moments, it threatens to sink into the sentimental bog of a Cinema Paradiso, but it's short enough and sharp enough to stay afloat.
And yet another movie about movies is showing up this week - Double Dare, which has a little more bite and staying power than Torremolinos 73 and After Midnight. Amanda Micheli (Just for the Ride) directed this fascinating and (more to the point) utterly cool documentary about the lives of stuntwomen, focusing in on two notable figures a generation apart.
On the one hand, there's young New Zealander Zoe Bell, who spends years as Lucy Lawless's double on Xena; after the show stops, she finds herself at loose ends and finally decamps for Hollywood in search of work.
On the other, there's 62-year-old Jeannie Epper, a 50-year Hollywood veteran. Epper is part of an L.A. stunt dynasty that includes her father, her children, and her grandchildren. Jeannie doubled for Lynda Carter on Wonder Woman, which makes her and Zoe generational counterparts.
In the course of making Double Dare, Micheli introduces the two, who immediately hit it off. As Zoe prepares to audition to be Uma Thurman's double in Kill Bill - Quentin Tarantino is one of the interviewees, who also include Steven Spielberg - the seemingly selfless Jeannie gives her tips about Hollywood, even though she represents competition for her own family. (In fact, we learn that Jeannie is so generous, she gave one of her kidneys to actor Ken Howard.)
While stuntmen are among filmmaking's unsung heroes, stuntwomen get even less attention, despite dealing with all the same health and career issues, plus a whole catalog of extra problems that don't affect the guys.
The most obvious problem is that, as with all groups of Hollywood performers, there is greater pressure on women than men to look young. It is distressing to hear Jeannie even contemplating liposuction. There are other, less obvious issues: As Jeannie explains, "Women have it tougher because of their costumes. There's usually more bare skin, which leaves no place to hide padding."
Then there's the scarcity of jobs - women on screen are less likely to have action scenes - and more than even the usual inherent sexism in the industry. Stuntmen are by nature a particularly macho bunch, who for years couldn't take women in their field seriously enough and wouldn't admit them to the stuntmen's association. Finally, in 1967, the women started their own group. But, though many of the guys have been dragged kicking and screaming into the new millennium, there's still a bias against women becoming a stunt coordinator/second unit director - one of the traditional goals for aging stuntpeople.
Toward the end, when we get to see Zoe working on Kill Bill, we realize that numerous shots that appeared to be Uma, even at a close viewing, were actually Zoe, whose contribution to the film is, by design, invisible in the final product.Published: 04/21/2005
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