THE 34th PORTLAND INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL, DAY 10

"the arbor," great britain, dir. clio barnard

meta-narratives have been so overdone in the past decade that even artists who manage to do them well risk coming off as hackneyed and passé (case in point, "certified copy" from day 5). but then, of course, it's that much more refreshing and inspiring when someone, say a filmmaker named clio barnard, manages to pull together so, well, refreshing and inspired as this film. angela dunbar wrote her play "the arbor" as a teenager living in the slums of bradford, england in the late 1970s. after having three children by three different men and achieving middling success as a stage and screen writer, she died of an embolism in her local pub (what one of her daughters called her real home in bradford) at 29. three decades after dunbar's play premiered at the royal court theater in london, barnard revisits the arbor in bradford in her film of the same name. in it, actors lip-synch to recordings of conversations and testimonials recorded by bradford with the surviving members of dunbar's family, most significantly her daughters lorraine and lisa. footage of the actors giving their lines is interspersed with scenes from dubar's play, newly reenacted for the film on and around the grass at brafferton arbor in bradford, as well as with television footage of dunbar and her family from the late seventies and eighties. the result is an intricate, highly original and theatrical performance of andrea dunbar's legacy -- the legacy of a severely underserved housing project -- just as dunbar's "the arbor" was a performance of her place and time as she experienced it directly. much more than a documentary, barnard's "the arbor" is a biographical play on screen. unfortunately, as refreshing and inspiring as barnard's presentation may be, her subject matter is anything but, and it might just be that there's even less hope for the people on the arbor than there was when andrea dunbar told their stories over thirty years ago.

"flamenco, flamecno," spain, dir. carlos saura

saura's "carmen" was the reason i fell in love with flamenco, so i might not be impartial in my assessment of this, his newest film, although i'll loudly restate my dissatisfaction with "fados," and i seemed to have been in the dissenting opinion on "flamenco, flamenco" among the group of flamencos with whom i saw the film. most of the music and dance in "flamenco, flamenco" are non-traditional. purists will hate it for that. but what's purism in music or dance, especially as is is implied to pertain to a style as historically mutable and untraceable as flamenco. it's de-bastardization and codification didn't really happen until recently anyway. for my part, i loved the two pianos playing the bulerías to the rhythm of the palmas. i loved the balletic style of the dance in the garrotin. the silencio looked like it might have been choreographed by fosse for a remake of "funny face," and i loved it. and there was more than enough for the purists, too, although a friend mentioned hating eva yerbabuena's dress from her soleá, one of the more traditional performances. i remembered liking the dress, especially that the thighs had been so worn from repeated slapping. and when she ended the dance posed as the dancer from john singer sargent's el jaleo (the painting having been the backdrop for yerbabuena and her musicians throughout the scene)? rapture. saura is an amazing director with a keen eye for photography in general and for framing in particular, and his expression of flamenco on screen is itself dynamic and powerful, regardless of the debatable power of any of the performances he includes in his film -- the last of which is a charming throwback to his "flamenco" from 1995. i won't spoil it.