Palm Springs Film Festival on the Right Track

The Palm Springs International Film Festival seems a winner on all counts. Overall attendance was up 25% over last year’s inaugural event, and at least 20 of the festival’s 70 films were sold out.

“Other than tired, I feel very, very proud of what was accomplished this year,” said festival director Denis Pregnolato of the event, which ended last weekend. “Our mayor, Sonny Bono, pushed so hard for two years. I think we’ve really caught on with the community, the distributors and the critics.”

The various special events, highlighted by a 30th anniversary presentation of “West Side Story,” an array of vintage musicals selected and presented by critics and a survey of the depiction of American Indians on the screen, were exceptionally popular with the older, mostly local crowds. More than 40 filmmakers came from around the world with their films.

Clearly, Bono, the festival’s founder, and Pregnolato, are on the right track. Their corporate sponsorship remains sturdy, even if it is down from 1990. This year their film programmer was Darryl Macdonald of the prestigious Seattle festival, and they had UC Berkeley’s Albert Johnson, the foremost authority on the American musical film, present special awards to Ruby Keeler and Cyd Charisse at a festive Saturday night black-tie gala, along with a show produced by Allan Carr.

In the course of the four-day event two things became clear: First, the festival draws an unusually large percentage of senior citizens. Second, the organizers with good reason are eager for the festival to be more than just a cultural event.

Palm Springs, of course, looks as glamorous as ever, especially during a quick drive down the beautifully lit Palm Canyon at night. But by day and on foot, downtown Palm Springs shows signs of abandonment. Empty stores, a number of them with signs saying “Moved to Palm Desert,” shows that with all the poshness remaining, Palm Springs is an aging resort competing with richer, more luxurious neighbors.

For Pregnolato, this means trying to build the festival into a well-promoted tourist attraction and a film event of international renown. But as eager as he is to push ahead, he is moving cautiously. Both Pregnolato and Bono are hoping to attract Hollywood studio participation, which--as local festival organizers have found--is about as easy as squeezing pearls from frozen oysters.

One thing the festival needs in order to demonstrate Hollywood’s necessity to participate is more attention from the media. One distribution company spokeswoman said her company was attracted to the festival because of its “proximity to Los Angeles and the chance to test a different kind of audience. I think the festival went pretty well, but it needed more press coverage.”

One thing Palm Springs achieved was a debunking of the myths that older audiences won’t sit still for films with subtitles and that they’re easily offended by sexual content. For example, Zhang Yi-Mou’s “Ju Dou,” China’s official entry in this year’s Oscar competition, is both highly erotic and artsy in telling the story of the star-crossed love between the bride of a rich, impotent old sadist and the terrible husband’s nephew. It drew a huge ovation at the end.

The festival opened Tuesday with “La Gloire de Mon Pere,” Yves Robert’s sugary adaptation of the first volume of film director Marcel Pagnol’s memoirs; its sequel, “Le Chateau de Ma Mere,” closed the festival Sunday evening. A second, weekday afternoon screening of “La Gloire” was a sellout, and a delight to the seniors who made up 80% to 90% of the audience.

Another crowd-pleaser, appealing to all ages, was Etienne Chatilez’s “Tatie Danielle,” an outrageous comedy featuring one of the nastiest old ladies ever depicted on the screen, played mischievously by Tsilla Chelton.

Indeed, most of the films, which ranged from such hard-edged low-budget contemporary film noirs as Carl Copaert’s “Delusion” to Robert Dornhelm’s “Requiem for Dominic,” possessed across-the-board appeal. “Requiem for Dominic,” Austria’s official Oscar submission, was perhaps the most talked-about film in the festival. It is a harrowing story about a real-life hero in last year’s Romanian Revolution, incorporating both documentary footage and dramatic re-creations.

“I wanted to go to the heart of a revolution of confusion and misunderstandings,” said Dornhelm, who started shooting last March. “I didn’t think about technique, I didn’t have time. It was not like making a movie but having to say something. I got the actual people to play themselves--even some of the members of the Secret Police.”

Another film of strong impact was Jiri Weiss’ “Martha and Me.” It starts out as a charming romantic comedy in which a middle-aged gynecologist (Michel Piccoli) in a Czech border town dumps his glamorous, two-timing Hungarian wife for his plump, devoted German housekeeper (“Bagdad Cafe’s” Marianne Sagebrecht). However, since the time is the ‘30s and the doctor is Jewish, “Martha and Me” becomes increasingly dark. The film, which took the Czech-born Weiss 30 years to get made, is a personal triumph for Sagebrecht, who was overcome with emotion at the screening.

Another superb performance is that of Thom Hoffman in Rudolf van den Berg’s “Evenings,” which will represent the Netherlands in the Academy Awards. Hoffman plays a young man coming to terms with his homosexuality in a dour Dutch town in the ‘30s in this exceedingly subtle and challenging film.

Margarethe von Trotta’s “The Return,” a contemplative study of two women (Barbara Sukowa, Stefania Sandrelli) in love with the same man (Sami Frey) is another fine film.

Especially winning is Pupi Avati’s warm and wonderfully brisk (but curiously titled) “The Story of Boys and Girls,” a shrewdly observed, compassionate study of class differences involving the journey of a young man and his proper Bolognese mother and aunts taking off for the country to meet the young man’s fiancee and her vast, earthy and volatile peasant family.

Among the other films generating good word-of-mouth among festivalgoers were Carlos Saura’s “Ay, Carmela!,” and Aki Kaursimaki’s “The Match Factory Girl.”