Hot Docs Planner: Christian Punks, Brazilian Beats, and Some Serious Monkey Business

By Torontoist

Every weekday and Saturday throughout Hot Docs, Torontoist is looking at a handful of festival offerings, recommending the worthwhile and de-recommending the not-so-worthwhile.

Nénette in Nicolas Philibert’s Nénette .

Well, it’s adios to Hot Docs for another year, as today and tomorrow mark the last days of the fest and your last chance to get caught up on all the great stuff you might have missed. Besides using our handy guides to help make any last-minute choices, last night, Hot Docs announced its 2010 award-winners, so maybe you’ll want to check out some of those.
On offer Saturday: Nénette, a measured French doc that serves as rejoinder for anyone who thought Dunston Checks In was the last great monkey movie; Beyond Ipanema, a look at the vibrant music of Brazil; and Our House, the story of a squathouse of Christian, vegan punks threatened by the forward march of gentrification. Torontoist’s Hamutal Dotan and Suzannah Showler tell you what you need to know about all three, after the jump. We’d also like to thank all our 2010 Hot Docs correspondents—Kasandra Bracken, Ashley Carter, Hamutal Dotan, Steve Kupferman, John Semley, and Suzannah Showler—for all their hard work covering this year’s fest. Thanks!

TORONTOIST’S RECOMMENDED PICKS GET A

Nénette

Directed by Nicolas Philibert. France. 70 minutes.
Nénette is a curious, enigmatic film. Nénette is also an enigmatic character—an orangutan who has spend thirty-five of her forty years in a Paris zoo. Nénette consists entirely of footage of Nénette and some of the other orangutans with her in the zoo: slow, easy-going, patient observation of her as she goes about her day, which involves some eating, and some grooming, but mostly just lounging around.
It’s a hard film to get your head around, at first. As minute after minute of close-ups unspool, punctuated by the passing comments of zoo-goers and the more reflective thoughts of Nénette’s keepers, it’s not entirely clear what the point is. Certainly it isn’t to learn more about orangutans, as such: you won’t leave this film knowing more about their biology or social capacities or natural habitat. Eventually though, it becomes increasingly apparent that there isn’t necessarily a point, per se—the film is both simpler and more complex than that.
On one hand, Nénette is a simple character study, a sketch of an interesting subject. (Toward the end of the film, someone explicitly discusses the mechanics of drawing an orangutan, in fact.) But Nénette is also a mirror of sorts: as we watch people’s shadows flicker on and off screen, seen only in the reflection in the glass of Nénette’s cage, humans too become the subject of the movie. What it says about us is that we find Nénette fascinating, and the ethics of zoos (all Nénette’s keepers have deeply ambiguous feelings on the subject), our ineluctable tendency to anthropomorphize creatures who seem so very like us: these enter into the film as much as Nénette herself does, not as verdicts, but as questions, as matters which naturally emerge from the process of observation.
In the frenzy of trying to jam yet another screening into an already packed schedule, Nénette offers the most welcome gift of real breathing room: it’s a film that’s not afraid to go slowly. Philibert reveals great confidence in choosing to shoot so little action for so long, and it’s worth pushing through any initial restlessness and letting the slower pace of Nénette win you over. HD
Screens Saturday May 8 at 4:30 p.m. at the Isabel Bader Theatre (93 Charles Street West) as a Special Presentation. Co-presented with TIFF Cinematheque.

Beyond Ipanema

Directed by Guto Barra. Brazil and USA. 87 minutes.
If you are a newbie looking for a primer on tropicalia, or if your boss has a thing for bossa nova and you want to learn whose names to drop next time you’re in her office, Beyond Ipanema is the film for you. If, however, you have more than a passing acquaintance with Brazilian music already, this flick will do little to extend your knowledge or understanding of the subject.
Beyond Ipanema is a well put-together but insubstantial survey of the varieties of Brazilian music, examining each genre/movement/breakout artist in chronological order and recounting how it became known elsewhere (primarily America). There are interviews with plenty of marquee names—everyone from Caetano Veloso and Bebel Gilberto to M.I.A. and Diplo—but the conversation almost always stays on the surface. There’s some great classic footage, but we also didn’t hear anything new; just about every track or album Beyond Ipanema referred to was one we knew well. (And we say this as amateur enthusiasts, not crate-digging fiends.)
It’s a sweet love note to music well worth loving, but Beyond Ipanema just doesn’t have enough depth to be truly satisfying. HD
Screens Saturday May 8 at 9:15 p.m. at the Cumberland 3 (159 Cumberland Street) and Sunday May 9 at 7 p.m. at the Royal Cinema (608 College Street) as part of the Made in South America programme. Co-presented with the Brazil Film Fest.

Jesus is just alright with the vegan punks in Our House.

Our House

Directed by Greg King and David Teague. USA. 58 minutes.
In Our House, three young, punk, vegan Christians take an abandoned warehouse on the still-to-be-gentrified edge of the trendy Brooklyn neighbourhood of Williamsburg and squat in it, sharing the space with recovering addicts, ex-cons, and the otherwise chronically homeless. This way of life comes to an inevitable crisis when the building’s owner, who is also a Christian and sympathetic to the project, must evict the group to make way for a condo development.
Between the radical and surprisingly effective optimism of the house’s three young founders and the often uplifting streets-to-sanctuary stories of the residents of Our House, the film’s crisis should have more narrative wallop than it does. Its content is doled out unevenly, coming in drips and drabs, and so, we are never taken as far in or made to care a much as we could.
At under an hour, Our House is a brief portrait whose subject matter is sufficiently interesting and more than superficially inspiring in that it is an easy, if not entirely fulfilling, film to watch. SS
Screens Saturday, May 8 at 4:30 p.m. at the Cumberland 2 (159 Cumberland Street) with Architecture of Home.
All stills courtesy of Hot Docs.