FADEOUT IN BERLIN

Final tidbits from the Berlin Film Festival:

Laconic Sean Penn at a press conference for “At Close Range,” when asked his feelings about James Dean: “He was a guy who died. He made a couple of films.”

Italian director Lina Wertmuller told Outtakes that at one time she had a different title in mind for her new film “Camorra,” but her distributor, Cannon, talked her out of it. The picture, due for U.S. release in April, is an anti-Mafia story that has an underground army of Neapolitan mothers taking revenge on drug dealers. Wertmuller’s choice for a title: “What Would Nancy Reagan Say?”

The “hot” director (with three smash pictures) has a new name: Taiwan’s Hou Hsiao Hsien. Hsien speaks no English, swears by the cinema of Pasolini, and makes subtle, intricately choreographed tales of family disintegration that had festival directors from around the world sitting in rapt attention. Said Derek Malcolm of the London Film Festival: “He’s a world-class director.”