I just saw this at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York, and here are my two cents...
The Auteur is a decent film. It starts off strongly, a cinema verite look into the life of a raffish, pot-bellied Italian director going to Portland, Oregon, to put in an appearance at a retrospective film festival being held in his honor. (And no, the meta-riffic irony is not lost on me about making a film which revolves around the protagonist, who is a director, going to attend a film festival, and then showing it at a film festival). It's kind of like Wes Anderson decided to shoot a softcore porn film. There are moments of humor both subtle and overt, and the protagonist, Arturo Domingo, played well by Melik Malkasian, a guy who, judging from his surname, is definitely not Italian, manages the accent of an Italian speaking English handsomely, complete with soft "H's" and missing articles. The scenes where he is directing his stars are wildly entertaining, and the crowd roars with approval.
This movie is good enough to be picked up by a studio, but there are too many dangling penii ('penises' sounds weird) and there's a fairly drawn out and sticky money shot involving a circle jerk at the end of Domingo's career-destroying "Full Metal Jackoff", and these will probably prevent the film from getting a wide release, or a release at all, because what rating do you really expect after all that? To his credit, in the Q & A which followed the movie, the director addresses this and says he didn't really care about ratings when making the pic - now THAT'S the spirit of independent film-making! Still, though, an admirable effort all around, with some strong performances and funny set pieces.
The Auteur is a decent film. It starts off strongly, a cinema verite look into the life of a raffish, pot-bellied Italian director going to Portland, Oregon, to put in an appearance at a retrospective film festival being held in his honor. (And no, the meta-riffic irony is not lost on me about making a film which revolves around the protagonist, who is a director, going to attend a film festival, and then showing it at a film festival). It's kind of like Wes Anderson decided to shoot a softcore porn film. There are moments of humor both subtle and overt, and the protagonist, Arturo Domingo, played well by Melik Malkasian, a guy who, judging from his surname, is definitely not Italian, manages the accent of an Italian speaking English handsomely, complete with soft "H's" and missing articles. The scenes where he is directing his stars are wildly entertaining, and the crowd roars with approval.
This movie is good enough to be picked up by a studio, but there are too many dangling penii ('penises' sounds weird) and there's a fairly drawn out and sticky money shot involving a circle jerk at the end of Domingo's career-destroying "Full Metal Jackoff", and these will probably prevent the film from getting a wide release, or a release at all, because what rating do you really expect after all that? To his credit, in the Q & A which followed the movie, the director addresses this and says he didn't really care about ratings when making the pic - now THAT'S the spirit of independent film-making! Still, though, an admirable effort all around, with some strong performances and funny set pieces.