THE CIRCUIT: SAN SEBASTIAN FILM FESTIVAL

by John Hopewell and Team Variety
The poster for “Acne” made a splash-let at Cannes: a curly-haired 13-year-old boy lies on a bed and peers between a woman’s splayed legs. He doesn’t look to overjoyed. In fact, he seems a little worried.

“Acne” was a standout in Cannes Directors’ Fortnight. It turned up again in a strong Horizontes Latinos section at San Sebastian. “Acne”’s set in those endless borderlands between child- and adulthood. The way Uruguayan director Federico Veiroj has it, they’re a pretty inhospitable place.

The protagonist, Rafael Bregman, sees his parent’s divorce; his best friend goes to live in Israel; his maid relieves him of his virginity, while he looks on like a patient receiving local anesthetic surgery.  Above all, Rafael sports bursting wowser acne, the sort that suggests that, yes, alien life has fallen on earth, and taken up residence on his face.

“Acne” has remarkable recall of pure adolescence. Rafael practices kissing by snogging his own arm; he jots down tips from his friends about how to talk to girls.  It’s shot by mostly hugging up to the protagonist but pulling away twice to long-shot in two crucial scenes, as if to suggest they’re fixed in Bregman’s memory. And it has that typical deadpan Uruguayan humor - think “25 Watts” and “Whisky” - as if its official film school were run by the Kaurismaki brothers.

They’re only three films, says Veiroj, interviewed at San Sebastian. Other Uruguayan movies are different. “It’s difficult to talk about a Uruguayan sense of humor, like you can talk about an English sense of humor.”

Feeling like Hugh Grant repping “Horse & Hounds” in “Notting Hill,” I probe lead Alejandro Tocar - remarkably facially spotless, but maybe he travels with a cosmetologist - if he’s planning a career in acting, Jean-Pierre Leaud style.

He’d be delighted to have another role, he says in perfect English. But a career might be difficult: Uruguay makes only two-to-four films a year. And he wants to stay in Uruguay. But Uruguayan production is growing. “In the last eight years or so productions are up, partly because they’ve gone well at festivals,” says Veiroj. A Uruguayan Film Institute launches next year.

Maybe Tosar will get a career. Certainly, Variety must get a handle on Uruguay. Especially if its next films are as good as “Acne.”

Read Variety's review of "Acne" here.

by John Hopewell
Believe it or not -- you might not believe from many of her films -- Meryl Steep has a sense of humor. And a pronounced one at that.  It was in large evidence at San Sebastian.

Streep was there to pick up a career achievement Donostia Prize. Before, she had to run the gauntlet of a press conference. She dazzled, and made people laugh.

Sweet Latin American femme journalist, simpering: "Bet Davies wrote a letter saying you would be her successor. If you could write a letter who world you send it to?"

Streep (imitating Davis): "I'm not dead yet, babe."

Journalist: "What happens if things change and the new president of the United States becomes a Democrat?"

Streep puts her hands above her head and squeals with delight to long applause, then replying:  "If it doesn't happen….I'm looking at real estate in San Sebastian (laughter)."

Streep said other interesting and intelligent things: “There are more women working in my industry at the money end and they're willing to put money into projects” with roles for women over 40.

What keeps her going?

“Appetite. No matter how good the dinner was the night before, around seven o'clock the next night, I'm want to go out and eat dinner.”

The best question, she said, to be asked at a press conference is “Does fiction film matter any more?”

"Now that there's so much appetite for documentary, the real events are somehow so much more bizarre."

Streep disagreed just once with a journalist, who observed that since she’s such a great actress that it’s impossible to know who she really is.

“You always bring something personal to your work,” she countered.

If Streep came over as anything, she came over as a mother. 

She's frustrated by the time and attention needed for film marketing these days:  “Sometimes I think that making a film is this much effort, and marketing a film (spreads her hands more) is this much. That make's it harder on the young ones.”

Hasn’t she thought about directing?

Directing's a 24-hour task, she said. But now that her youngest daughter is 17-years-old and (imitating pushing) nearly out of the house, well, she’d now think about it.

But even here, she made a joke: “Most of the directors with whom I’ve worked would say that I have directed before.”

by Emiliano de Pablos
One of the galas that generated most expectation for local audiences at this year's San Sebastian Film Festival edition wasn't even for a film.

Already, this month, Madrid has seen two glitzy preems - for TV series.

But San Sebastian went one step further Friday, opening the Victoria Eugenia theater to police-thief pursuit skein "Guante blanco," one of pubcaster RTVE's flagships for the 2008-09 season.

San Sebatian fest audiences, more used to left-of-field or social-issue art films during the fest, nevertheless heartily applauded the series which combines suspense, comedy and family dramas.

After the screening, top RTVE execs and "Guante"'s production company Bambu Producciones held a party at the nearby Hotel Maria Cristina, which went into the wee hours.

RTVE's new management thinks that film and TV should move closer. Friday's pioneering event for the San Sebastian fest could set a precedent for more galas to come.


Actor Jose Luis Garcia Perez, TVE head of programming Eva Cebrian and humorist-journo-filmmaker Guillermo Fesser smiling at the Maria Cristina party. Perez plays Mario, the leader of a gang of thieves.


Bambu founder, producer Ramon Campos, with director of photography Jacobo Martinez (left) and Enrique Baro, who made the making-off. As with "Desaparecida," in "Guante," Campos shows multiple film influences.


Top RTVE execs at the Victoria Eugenia:  TVE director Javier Pons, actor Carlos Hipolito (police inspector Bernardo Valle in "Guante"), Cebrian and RTVE prexy Luis Fernandez.


TVE head of film Gustavo Ferrada and actor Eloy Azorin, who plays Jorge, and brings a comedic dimension to the band of thieves.


Producer Ramon Campos, left, crouched, and part of the cast of the series seconds before entering a box in the belle epoque Victoria Eugenia theater to enjoy the premiere.

by John Hopewell and Jonathan Holland
Yesim Ustaoglu’s “Pandora’s Box” won the 56th San Sebastian festival’s Golden Shell for best pic, plus a Silver Shell actress for France’s Tsilla Chelton as an ageing Alzheimer-afflicted country matriarch.

In one of the most popular decisions by the Jonathan Demme- led jury, Melissa Leo took a second Silver Shell actress statue for her performance in Courtney Hunt’s “Frozen River,” a San Sebastian Competish fave.

Full story here.

by Martin Dale
"Norteado" swept up all 3 awards in San Sebastian's Films in Progress section, but the prize-giving speeches also emphasized the quality of this year's selection, showcasing the current vitality of Latin American cinema.

Loneliness, claustrophobic social pressures, the struggle to survive, disorientated men, feisty women and wonderful intrinsic humor, were just some of the intriguing ingredients of the 6 Latin American films in this year's 14th edition.

In "Arctic", the third feature by award-winning Buenos Aires-based director Santiago Loza, we follow a young man as he wanders through a sweltering zone of the Argentinian interior in the hope of recovering his kidnapped wife

Loza creates a sense of icy despair and oppression by almost constantly tracking directly behind the protagonist, filling one third of the frame with his sweat-drenched shoulders and nape of his neck, deliberately hiding the wider landscape.

29-year old Chilean-director Sebastian Silva stirred up visible interest from sales agents at the screening with his second feature, "The Maid".

Catalina Saavedra stars as a live-in maid who spent her last 23 years essentially confined to the house, where she is slowly losing her mind.

Silva sets the audience on a knife-edge, unsure whether the maid is about to derail psychologically and creating moments of intrinsic humor.

Inspired by the director's own childhood experiences and shot in his family home, the film turns on its organic portrayal of the family members where the servant is the bedrock of the family -- as long as she's in crisis so is the rest of the family.

Providing a rare insight into life in Nicaragua, Florence Jaugey's "La Yuma" portrays a young woman from a poor neighborhood who is training to become a boxer.

"Optical Illusions" by 33-year old Cristian Jimenez has a subterranean melancholic humor that the director claims is typical of his home town Valdivia in Southern Chile where the film is set.

The film weaves together three stories, including that of a shopping mall security guard who falls in love with an elegant young woman who's hooked on shoplifting.

"The Tree" by Carlos Serrano, has certain parallels with Loza's "Arctic." We follow a lonely man's disconcerting journey through the streets of Madrid as he tries to come to terms with losing his job and separating from his wife.

Winning film, "Northless" by Rigoberto Perezcano begins in similar vein - with a lone man crossing the desert in blistering heat, but then switches gear and transforms into a tale about attempts to cross the intimidating US-Mexico border wall. 

Notwithstanding the oppressive imagery of the border wall and repeated, desperate attempts by Mexicans to cross it, the film also carries a humorous touch as the main character romances, and is helped by, two local women whose husbands have both previously crossed the border leaving no trace.

The Variety España team is on the ground in Spain, bringing regular dispatches throughout the San Sebastian Film Festival.