The 25th Chicago International Film Festival moves into its second full week with a fair number of worthwhile films, including what are probably the two best parts of Krzysztof Kieslowski’s Decalogue (the grim A Short Film About Killing and the exquisite A Short Film About Love), Maurizio Nichetti’s hilarious The Icicle Thief, several retrospective items, and several other films listed below and indicated by asterisks (*) (those are recommended by our reviewers). Of special note is Christian Blackwood’s engrossing, eccentric, and oddly inspirational Motel, a personal documentary with the feeling of a fiction film, which I caught up with last weekend. Screenings will be at the Music Box, 3733 N. Southport; the Village, 1548 N. Clark; Ida Noyes Hall, 1212 E. 59th St., on the University of Chicago campus; and the Three Penny, 2424 N. Lincoln. Tickets can be purchased in person at the theater box office the day of the screening, starting one hour prior to the first screening, or at the film festival store at 1538 N. Clark. They are also available by phone at 644-3456 or at Ticketmaster: 559-1212 or 902-1500 (credit cards only). General admission to each program, with some exceptions, is $6, $5 for Cinema/Chicago members. The “Best of the Festivals” retrospective films and the Chaplin programs (except for the City Lights presentation on October 30) are $5 general admission, $4 for Cinema/Chicago members. For further information, call 644-3456 or listen to radio stations WNUA (95.5 FM) or WBEZ (91.5 FM) for updates and coverage. –Jonathan Rosenbaum
The Spider’s Web
Mrinal Sen’s Indian film about three friends on a weekend jaunt to the country who wind up at an isolated house with a paralyzed blind woman and her daughter (1984). (Univ. of Chicago, 7:00)
Restricted Area
150 minutes of TV commercials from all over the world–a condensed version of an annual seven-hour event in Paris. In keeping with the Chicago festival’s predilection for the very bad along with the good, a lot of bad commercials are promised along with some good ones. (Music Box, 11:00)
Saturday October 21
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Like A Short Film About Killing, A Short Film About Love was made as a 50-odd-minute episode of Krzysztof Kieslowski’s Decalogue series for Polish television (they were parts five and six). Kieslowski later developed these two into feature-length movies underlining respectively the senselessness and randomness of murder (and punishment) and desire. In his earlier Blind Chance, Kieslowski based the entire narrative structure on the exploration of randomness: depending on whether or not he caught a train, a young man could live three different lives. Though not strictly theological, the Polish director’s vision of mankind is informed by Christian concepts. One is man’s essential frailty. Another is a keen sense of the contagion of evil, at least of the “transference of guilt,” as also found in Hitchcock’s oeuvre. It was already at work in A Short Film About Killing, but is nowhere more splendidly expounded than in A Short Film About Love. This film contains a number of Hitchcockian elements: a blond heroine–the irresponsible object of desire–and a voyeuristic apparatus reminiscent of Rear Window. The real similarity lies in the transference of guilt: Tomek is induced by his roommate to become a voyeur; this passion (initially a mere pretext for sexual jokes and male bonding) becomes his own private, dark obsession. Truffaut once said that Hitchcock filmed his love scenes as murder scenes and his murder scenes as love scenes. In A Short Film A bout Love, the protagonist hungrily watches the woman he loves as if he wanted to kill her; he persecutes and annoys her, reminding me of what 18th-century French moralists said about love–that in its ways and modes of expression, it looks more like hatred than friendship. Conversely, when the object of Tomek’s attention finally invites him into her place, she humiliates him in a way that constitutes a symbolic murder–with painful consequences. However, while Kieslowski displays, not without humor and sympathy, the transference of guilt, he also allows for a transference of grace, which gives the film its luminous touch. The ending takes us onto another plane of reality, like the reunion between husband and wife in Kieslowski’s earlier No End. It is as beautiful, poignant, and sad as the finale of Tristan und Isolde. (BR) (Music Box, 7:00)
