Cinematical

A theme is starting to crop up amongst the 9a.m. press screenings -- one that can certainly be unwrapped by simply scanning the audience and watching them yawn, while waiting to see who will start snoring first. Sure, the fest has started to catch up to the press; folks are sleep deprived, barely hanging on to the couple hours they're getting here and there, and trying desperately to inject into their brains the necessary caffeine to get them through at least one more film (thanks Dunkin Donuts!)

But, there's also a problem with the content: On Sunday morning, In Memory of Myself bored most into confusion, our friend David Hudson over at GreenCine Daily informed us that yesterday's 9a.m. flick, When A Man Falls in the Forest, happened to tumble onto the wrong side of good -- and, today, The Other (or El otro) kept the theme alive with its non-existent score, little dialogue and aimless wondering. I missed yesterday's 9a.m. screening when my hotel botched the wake-up call; if this theme continues, I just might give those at the front desk an extra something to screw up again.

In The Other, the great Julio Chávez plays a 45 -year-old lawyer who's just found out his wife is pregnant; a somewhat shocking and scary surprise that automatically turns into a brief mid-life crisis. Not one that has him buying fancy sports cars, but one that has him contemplating how much time he has left on the planet -- whether a child, who's born now, will have enough time to get to know his or her father? Of course, this isn't told to us. Like In Memory of Myself, the conflict here is all internal; the characters never discuss the problems plaguing them. Instead, it's up to us to dissect feelings and thoughts, worries and fears, so we have a better understanding of who this man is and why he acts the way he does.

Luckily for us, Chávez is an excellent actor; the kind that hangs it all out there with his eyes, his hesitation and his heavy breathing. However, plot skips along slowly as the conflict never rises above what we already expect to happen. When our lawyer heads out of town on business, we expect him to stay awhile to try to find himself. And sitting next to an elderly man who passes away at some point during the bus ride out makes the choice to stay and contemplate that much easier. In fact, writer-director Ariel Rotter continually hits us over the head with images of the elderly (for obvious reasons); the main character's father is an elderly men, bed-ridden and unable to take a bath without help.

If that's not enough, Chavez's character (whose name escapes me; beside it only being mentioned once, he changes it throughout the film in an attempt to either pretend to be someone else for awhile or out of guilt because he shouldn't be checking into hotel rooms or following around other woman in a strange town) runs into more elderly ... and is even called upon to save the life of one when the clerk at the hotel he's staying at thinks he's a doctor. She thinks he's a doctor because he told her he was. Oh, and he's also an architect. He's many different people, and the plot could have gone in many different directions -- perhaps taken routes a little more enticing to the eye? But no, Rotter, more a director than a writer, wants us to live in his moment, instead of creating one a tad more appealing. In doing so, The Other is just like, well, a lot of the other films playing in Berlin: vague, bland and -- like the tired writer holed up on the second floor of Dunken Donuts -- completely out of touch with the world outside his tiny, and rainy, temporary home.