Highlights of the AFI Festival

Following are capsule reviews of a selection of today’s screenings in the American Film Institute Los Angeles International Film Festival at the Cineplex Odeon Century Plaza Cinemas:

‘A Happy Sunday’

Venezuela, 1988, 95 minutes 7:15 p.m. In a powerful Gabriel Garcia Marquez adaptation, director Olegario Barrera reveals two worlds of Caracas, from super-rich to barely scraping by. This ironically titled happy Sunday revolves around the bright 10-year-old son of millionaire parents and a talented and much-loved musician in his 30s, who meet on the day the boy has faked his own kidnaping, hoping to get his self-absorbed parents’ attention. The film is lit by the lovely presence of Victor Cuica as the sax player, who suspects the boy is not the waif he pretends to be, and by the criss-crossing portraits of the rich and the richer, which is clearly Cuica’s condition. RECOMMENDED.