Governor's ball
At San Jose's Cinequest festival last week, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger spoke about recently retiring from his Hollywood career and the unlikelihood he'll take it up again. (Having already climbed to that mountaintop, as well as the bodybuilding and trophy-marriage ones, would you expect him to stop halfway up Mt. Politics?) But the erstwhile star of such classics as Jingle All the Way, Batman and Robin, and The Jayne Mansfield Story failed to mention our personal fave in his screen ouevre.
Originally produced for the Playboy Channel in 1983 – between Conan the Barbarian and Conan the Destroyer, a moment when Arnold presumably wasn't worried about his future elective viability – Carnival in Rio is an hour-long "documentary," a sort of prurient travelogue "hosted" by the leer-muscle-flexing Predator himself. Usually accompanied by one local Playmate type or another, he tours Rio de Janiero, site of "some of the most gorgeous beaches, mountains, and women anywhere," with emphasis naturally on "the beautiful, sexy, and mysterious Brazilian woman."
One highlight is a visit to a club samba contest, where "gorgeous bodies move in ways that even a fitness expert like me can't believe." As the camera zooms in on the golden globes barely bisected by spangled thongs, all vigorously shaking in Arnold's ringside-table direction, our host loses it: "All right! I like that! Yesssss!" This moment leads to meditation on cultural differences, as he notes that "For Americans it is the breast" that is the most succulent naughty female bit. But not for him – "I can absolutely understand why Brazil is totally devoted to my favorite body part: the assssss." Later he gets an illustrative lesson in Portuguese terminology ("caress," "kiss," etc.) from another babe whom he somehow gets to fellate a breadstick. Now that's edutainment!
Shaking his own bulky bonbons at various Carnaval events, the future guv comes off as a supersize frat boy or bachelor-party celebrant who's a bit loud 'n' loutish but harmless (none of the camera-hogging Brazilian starlets seem to mind his Dr. Gropius antics). Indeed, there's something kinda endearing about him here: unlike most showbiz types – let alone politicians – who'd remain professionally self-conscious under similar circumstances, Arnold is clearly just having a very, very good time. Last we looked, a VHS Carnival in Rio was going for $13 on eBay. Own a piece of history! (Dennis Harvey)
Lyrical, political
Letters from Henri Matisse to Pierre Bonnard, so candid they often sound like diary entries, provide some of the voice-over material in Barbara Hammer's latest documentary, Resisting Paradise. Filming in Cassis, the fishing village in southern France where Matisse spent the last years of his life, Hammer often pairs the painter's thoughts with her own splendid images that capture varieties of color and patterns of light or shadow. Documentaries are rarely as effortlessly lyrical as Resisting Paradise. But as the title of her film suggests, Hammer is also concerned with the political actions – mostly by female members of Matisse's family – that made his final paradisical visions possible. As she interviews his grandchildren and surviving resistance fighters such as Lisa Fittko (who spirited Walter Benjamin across the Pyrenees mountains) and Marie-Ange Allibert Rodriguez, the war that surrounded Matisse's and Bonnard's artistic landscapes enters the film's picture. Posing a pair of timely questions – "What are our responsibilities during political crises?" and "How can art exist during a time of war?" – Hammer looks to Fittko and others for answers as she attempts to find her own. Barbara Hammer attends an S.F. Cinematheque screening of Resisting Paradise, Thurs/8, 7:30 p.m., Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Screening Room, 701 Mission, S.F. $4-$7. (415) 978-2787. (Johnny Ray Huston)
