A Good Day to Be Black and Sexy
Dennis Dortch, U.S., 2008, 92 min.
Monday, Nov. 17, 9:30 p.m., Tivoli 3

The Hollywood Reporter describes “A Good Day to Be Black and Sexy,” which premiered at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival, as “a raunchy between-the-sheets peek at modern-day black sexuality.” A series of six comedic vignettes set in Los Angeles, the film doesn’t shy away from the more controversial aspects of contemporary relationships but finds abundant (if uncomfortable) humor in them. Variety calls the film “a worldly, knowing look at adult affairs” and describes first-time director Dortch as “a trickster: He’s far less interested in where movies have been than where they’ve never dared to go – into the abrasive side of sexual posturing, negotiating and politics.”

The Grocer’s Son
(Le Fils de l’épicier)
Eric Guirado, France, 2007, 96 min., French
Sunday, Nov. 16, 6:30 p.m., Frontenac
Monday, Nov. 17, 7 p.m., Frontenac

When his father becomes ill, Antoine – still immature at 30 years old – reluctantly leaves Paris for his native Provençe, where he must take up the family business, driving groceries from hamlet to hamlet and delivering supplies to the inhabitants. Accompanied by Claire, a friend on whom he has a secret crush, Antoine gradually warms to the initially gruff villagers, who prove both funny and endearing. The LA Times writes: “A love of unspoiled countryside and its sturdy people suffuses this film, which unfolds with subtlety, humor and affection – and becomes in the process a pure enchantment.”

Half-Life
Jennifer Phang, U.S., 2008, 106 min.
Saturday, Nov. 15, 7:45 p.m., Tivoli 3

Reflective, subversive and gorgeously photographed – with bursts of vivid animation – “Half-Life” takes place in a world where global warming has passed the tipping point. As inland areas grow hotter, the air around the Wu family crackles with strangeness and unpredictability: Precocious Timothy and jaded sister Pam use their imaginative powers to escape a confining home life, save their self-destructive mother from her charmingly manipulative boyfriend, and finally reinvent their world in a mind-bending conclusion. Premiering at this year’s Sundance, “Half-Life” was named Best Feature at the Gen Art Film Festival. The Hollywood Reporter’s Stephen Farber declares the film “an imaginative and deeply affecting effort” that “marks the debut of a promising, truly independent film artist.” With director Phang.

The Heartbeat Detector
(La Question humaine)
Nicolas Klotz, France, 2007, 143 min., French
Tuesday, Nov. 18, 6:30 p.m., Frontenac
Wednesday, Nov. 19, 1:30 p.m., Frontenac

A quietly riveting mystery of blackmail and intrigue, “The Heartbeat Detector” asks provocative moral questions as it uncovers the long-buried secrets of high-powered corporate executives. Simon Kessler (“The Diving Bell and the Butterfly” star Mathieu Amalric), a psychologist working in the human-resources department of a multinational corporation, is asked to provide a detailed report on the firm’s German CEO, whom the company fears may be falling into an unstable mental state. Salon’s Andrew O’Hehir says of “The Heartbeat Detector”: “If you’re a fan of Hitchcock, of Kubrick, of the kind of thriller that has the implacable mystery of great sculpture or great architecture, of movies that create their own visual, aural and symbolic universe and suck you bodily into them – well, you’ve simply got to see this.”

Humboldt County
Darren Grodsky & Danny Jacobs, U.S., 2008, 97 min.
Thursday, Nov. 13, 7 p.m., Tivoli 1

After a drunken one-night stand, tightly wound UCLA med student Peter Hadley (Jeremy Strong) finds himself stranded in picturesque Humboldt County at the family home of free-spirited Bogart (Fairuza Balk). The judgmentally inclined Peter at first resists the eccentric enclave of pot farmers but slowly comes to embrace their easygoing life and ideals. Consciously evoking such ’70s classics as “The Graduate” and “Five Easy Pieces,” “Humboldt County” features an astonishingly deep ensemble that includes rising actor Chris Messina (“Vicki Christina Barcelona”), HBO stars Frances Conroy (“Six Feet Under”) and Brad Dourif (“Deadwood”), and legendary filmmaker Peter Bogdanovich. At the film’s SXSW debut, the Austin Chronicle described the “pitch-perfect directing debut” of former St. Louisans Grodsky and Jacobs as “a smart, moving, and altogether canny glimpse into the heart of a shell-shocked American dream.” With directors Grodsky & Jacobs.
Sponsored by Mandarin and Jeffrey T. Fort.

The Inferno
(L’inferno)
Giuseppe de Liguoro, Italy, 1911 (restored in 2004), 71 min.
Sunday, Nov. 16, 3 p.m., SLAM

The first full-length Italian film ever made, “The Inferno” is a wild re-imagining of Dante’s epic, an extremely loose adaptation that takes inspiration from the illustrations of Gustav Doré to conjure its visions of hell. A three-year production that involved more than 150 people – an astonishing figure at the time – “The Inferno” proved an international hit, taking in more than $2 million in the United States alone. Calling the film “a fascinating relic of pre-First World War signs and wonders,” the Independent’s Nick Hasted marvels that “The Inferno” has “the antique oddness of a magic-lantern show, as carousels of bodies jerkily swivel, rows of legs poke out of a river of filth, and a dragon appears, inexplicably, for a second. Naked bodies twist in suffering, and men in horned devil-suits cackle.”
With live musical accompaniment by the New Music Circle.
Co-presented by the Saint Louis Art Museum

It’s Hard to Be Nice
(Tesko je biti fin)
Srdjan Vuletic, Bosnia-Herzegovina, 2007, 102 min., Serbo-Croatian
Monday, Nov. 17, 2:15 p.m., Frontenac
Tuesday, Nov. 18, 4 p.m., Frontenac

Fudo, a 40-year-old taxi driver, wants to be good, but he lives in the wrong time and place: contemporary Sarajevo. Though Fudo has elaborate plans to rise above his petty-criminal past, his old friends have their own scheme, which involves bringing their pal back for one last job. Variety describes “It’s Hard to Be Nice” – director Vuletic’s follow-up to his well-regarded “The Summer in the Golden Valley” – as “an engaging, urban fairy tale” that “could also be a parable for the course Bosnia itself should travel.”

I’ve Loved You So Long
(Il y a longtemps que je t’aime)
Philippe Claudel, France, 2008, 118 min., French
Sunday, Nov. 23, 6:15 p.m., Frontenac

The talk of the Telluride and Toronto film fests, “I’ve Loved You So Long” tells the story of two estranged sisters who reunite when Juliette (Kristin Scott Thomas) – who’s murdered her 6-year-old son – is released from prison after 15 years. Over the objections of her family, younger sibling Lea (Elsa Zylberstein) invites her sister to come live with her, and gradually a different Juliette emerges from the shadows of her terrible crime. London’s Guardian newspaper singles out Scott Thomas for particular praise: “Her formidable bilingual presence, her beauty – elegant and drawn in early middle age – her air of hypersensitive awareness of all the tiny absurdities and indignities with which she is surrounded, coupled with a drolly lenient reticence: it all creates an intelligent, observant drama about dislocation, fragility and the inner pain of unshakeable memories.”
Sponsored by Marcia Harris

The Juche Idea
Jim Finn, U.S., 2008, 62 min.
With Interkosmos
Jim Finn, U.S., 2006, 71 min.
Friday, Nov. 14, 7:30 p.m., Webster

SLIFF presents a provocatively strange double bill by native St. Louisan Jim Finn. “The Juche Idea,” partially inspired by the true story of a South Korean filmmaker kidnapped by the movie-obsessed Kim Jung Il in the 1970s, is a deadpan comedy that follows the efforts of a South Korean video artist to revitalize North Korean cinema. In “Interkosmos,” another brilliantly conceived faux-documentary, Finn chronicles a failed German space-colonization mission, telling the story through narration, dialogue, letters and period songs. Variety calls Finn’s films “without precedent or category” and asserts “the evidence that current filmmaking is brimming with original, standard-breaking creations has to include the work of Jim Finn, … (whose films) boldly upturn notions of documentary and fiction, propaganda thought, reality and restaging, and even what an ‘experimental film’ actually is.” With director Finn.

Kept & Dreamless
(Las Mantenidas Sin Sueños)
Vera Fogwill & Martín Desalvo, Argentina, 2005, 94 min., Spanish
Friday, Nov. 14, 4:45 p.m., Frontenac
Wednesday, Nov. 19, 2:30 p.m., Frontenac

During Argentina’s economic crisis of the ’90s, 9-year-old Eugenia and her mother live a seemingly colorful life surrounded by eclectic neighbors and an offbeat collection of family. But for Eugenia, who must deal with her mother’s dysfunctional and drug-addled lifestyle, life is anything but pleasant. A darkly inspiring story of expectation, acceptance and nontraditional family, “Kept & Dreamless” features standout performances from director Fogwill as the mother and young actress Lucía Snieg as Eugenia.