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Tales of two cities By Dave Kim HERE WE ARE , 20 years into the Film Arts Festival of Independent Cinema's celebration of diverse Bay Area filmmaking, and the fest's opening films tackle two worlds that couldn't be further apart. Both, though, are unmistakably San Franciscan. Director Daniel Gamburg's IPO takes us back a few years to a city on the verge of high-tech collapse. Sometimes history is so painful, all you can really do is make a total mockery of it. Former dot-commers are finally taking the financial Band-Aids off wounds suffered from the Internet bust, and plenty of artists (who were once pushed out of their studios by those rent-raising geeks) are ready to rub the hurt back in. But as much as it stings some, others have simply learned to treat that grand mirage of an era as, well, not yet funny but at least absurd. With his first feature, Gamburg follows a trail blazed by docs like 2001's Startup.com, leaving the realism behind to charge into farce territory. The result is a fabulously improvised satire that spears it all: gene manipulation, executive corruption, dot-com pipe dreams, and other timely targets of the American nightmare. Susan (Kerry Gudjohnsen) is the CEO of an online company called Hot Tot, which features a Web site allowing Net-savvy parents to pick the features of their unborn children. High-strung financier Kip (Matthew Gardner) bankrolls the enterprise, and by Halloween of 2000, HotTot.com is ready to make millionaires out of its offbeat, underqualified staff. Blind ambition sends the execs to file for IPO that December, while the private lives of the employees slip further into chaos. Follies from biz conventions, company parties, and staff meetings provide the film's more outrageous elements, but IPO is less a tale of the dot-com phenomenon itself than one about the San Franciscans brought down by it. We see how personal relationships and hotshot business dealings don't mix (see also "Eisner, Michael"); Kip can't hang on to his gay venture capitalist-turned-hippie boyfriend; homeless employees Joe and his sweetheart, Kachina, can't keep it together; and executive assistant Maria finds a sexual replacement for her depressed, unsupportive husband. The story flourishes on bitter conflict, then leads us brutally to a nonredemptive final note. Beneath its comedic shine, the movie's actually kind of a downer. But it's an admirable and well-acted one. IPO emerged from six months of rehearsals involving the talented BareWitness Players, who improvised scenes all over the city with a bare-bones camera crew. The character exchanges consequently enjoy a fierce spontaneity, rivaling those between the usual suspects in a Christopher Guest mockumentary. Not all seven of the main players manage a wide emotional range, but their kicking-and-screaming caricatures seem appropriate for satire's sake. Plus, the hullabaloo isn't without spot-on delicate touches, which range from Susan (slickly) misquoting Shakespeare in company speeches to a street-weathered Kachina having a solacing moment with some wool slippers. Riding on the wallA 15-minute Muni ride away from the city's office buildings and big businesses is a lonelier, less conspicuous San Franciscan showroom. It's definitely no art gallery – you know, with expensive frames, hardwood floors, and Napa Valley wine – but the inside of Buena Vista's Sunset Tunnel serves a pretty similar purpose. Bay Area graffiti artists, most gaining recognition only through esoteric aliases, have been helping themselves to this mile-long urban canvas for decades. Their work is never properly lit, captioned, or sold. Commuters on the N Judah train, peering out their windows between Cole Valley and Duboce Park, might catch passing blurs of the art, which impresses some and angers others. The tunnel is a graff aficionado's museum, a memorial to late writer Mike "Dream," and a nightmare for any Department of Public Works official. So, naturally, it's also a featured spot in director Benjamin Morgan's film about S.F. graffiti artists, Quality of Life. The coarse-grained narrative trails Mikey "Heir" Rosario (Lane Garrison) and Curtis "Vain" Smith (Brian Burnam), young writers who spray-paint their respective throw-ups on every spare inch of the city. After painting (or "bombing," to y'all in the know) trucks, the tunnel, buses, storefronts, and rooftops, they eventually get caught and end up facing some serious jail time. Giving up the tagger's itch, however, proves to be a grueling ordeal, one that tests the pair's friendship to life-changing degrees. For hotheaded Vain, the sacrifice has much higher stakes than he thinks. If 1982's Wild Style taught us anything, it's that graffiti movies – at least narrative ones – shouldn't rely on the beauty of the craft alone. It's painful to point out, but hip-hop culture has traditionally ignored adequate story lines in its films (there, I said it), often trusting the documentary form to show off its free-flowing elements. Morgan overcompensates with his emotionally charged drama, borrowing a few dramatic premises from other "urban" flicks and taking them all a bit too seriously. Still, first-time film actors Garrison and Burman bring a rough-around-the-edges authenticity to their roles. Tajai Massey (of local rap collective Hieroglyphics) provides notable support as Dino, a Mr. Miyagi-meets-Morpheus character and mentor to Heir. While graffiti politics and the urban struggle take up most of the narrative spotlight, vérité-style cinematography fleshes out the story's metropolitan flavor. The whole grit 'n' grain school of filmmaking surfaces all too often to capture the inner-city experience, and director of photography Kev Robertson does well to hone in on graff's emotive nuances. Hasty bombing missions get their explosive montage sequences, while steady piecework is granted a much more reverent gaze. Morgan's film is also a love letter to the Mission District, which rarely has looked so vibrant with its classic Victorians, scuzzy streets, and, of course, brilliant murals. Film Arts Festival of Independent Cinema runs Thurs/11-Sun/14. Venues are Roxie Cinema, 3117 16th St., S.F.; Castro Theatre, 429 Castro, S.F. For tickets (most shows $8-$10) and more information, call (415) 552-FILM or go to www.filmarts.org. IPO screens Fri/12, 7 p.m., Roxie; Quality of Life screens Fri/12, 9:15 p.m., Roxie. |
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