Chicago International Film Festival screenings are held at AMC River East 21 (AMC), 322 Illinois St.; Landmark’s Century Centre Cinema (LM), 2828 N. Clark St.; and Thorne Auditorium, on Northwestern University’s Chicago campus (THN), 375 E. Chicago Ave. For additional Tribune coverage of the festival, visit www.chicagotribune.com/filmfest. For ticket information, contact Ticketmaster at 312-902-1500 or the Festival hotline at 312-332-FILM. For a complete schedule, visit www.chicagofilmfestival.com.
PICK OF THE DAY
`Climates’ (star)(star)(star)(star)
(Nuri Bilge Ceylan; Turkey; 1:41)
Dramatic poetry in motion. It may sound like a prosaic end-of-the-affair story, but descriptions can be deceptive. Across four seasons, director Ceylan (who also wrote and stars) follows the breakup and the post-breakup tangle between an Istanbul university professor and his art-director girlfriend. We’ve been here before–but never like this, with the delicacy, daring juxtaposition of moods (the sex scene between the professor and a sometime mistress is startling) and exquisite visual control that only a masterwork can offer. Ebru Ceylan, the writer-director’s wife, plays the wary lover, and few actresses can fill a close-up–“Climates” deploys them brilliantly–with such precise shadings of emotion. The picture, which cuts deeper than Ceylan’s earlier “Distant,” was shot in high-definition digital video. With the right projection equipment (here’s hoping) the result is a chamber piece with the emotional impact of a grand, unsettling symphony. So, now that I’ve overhyped it. … In Turkish with English subtitles. 8 p.m. Fri., LM; 3:45 p.m. Sun., AMC.
–Michael Phillips
OTHER CHOICES
`Jasmine Women’ (star)(star)(star)
(Hou Yong, China; 2:10)
Gender politics are writ large in Hou Yong’s passionate epic, which profiles three generations of Chinese women, highlighting their doomed love lives. Men are not at their best in this adaptation of Su Tong’s novel “Women’s Lives,” leaving the women to pick up the pieces left in their destructive wakes. Given the subject matter, Yong could easily have turned “Jasmine” into an overly simplistic, anti-male diatribe. Instead, it’s a compassionate, complex examination of the universality of love and the human capacity for forgiveness. Stars Zhang Ziyi and Joan Chen are superb. In Mandarin, with English subtitles. 5 p.m. Fri., LM; 1:30 p.m. Wed., AMC.
–Jessica Reaves
`The Trials of Darryl Hunt’
(star)(star)(star)1/2
(Ricki Stern & Annie Sundberg; U.S.; 1:55)
Here’s a story that’ll sound familiar to Illinois residents: An African-American man is repeatedly and wrongfully convicted of murder thanks to blindly aggressive prosecutors and, in this case, all-white juries. But the extraordinarily gracious Hunt’s story takes place in North Carolina, and this documentary, which chronicles his 20-year ordeal, offers a profoundly uplifting message about the resiliency of the human spirit. 4 p.m. Fri., AMC; 6:30 p.m. Sat., AMC).
–Mark Caro
More Top Picks Labs
`Change of Address’ (star)(star)(star)
(France, Emmanuel Mouret; 1:25)
An easily smitten horn player (Emmanuel Mouret) moves in with an unbuttoned stranger (Frederique Bel); in the subsequent tangle of affairs, she and a pretty horn student (Fanny Valette) drive him a bit crazy, to our not-infrequent pleasure. Mouret, the writer-drector-star who plays the hapless David in this austere but sprightly little romantic comedy, looks a little like a preppie descendant of Fernandel, the famed horse-faced French movie comic of the pre- and post-World War II; Bel looks (and acts) a lot like Lisa Kudrow of “Friends.” Mouret’s new movie is slight, but charming. In French, with English subtitles. 6:30 p.m., Fri., AMC)
–Michael Wilmington
`The Page Turner’ (star)(star)1/2
(Denis Dercourt; France; 1:25)
Sleek, ice-cold French revenge number. Premise: A 10-year-old keyboard prodigy loses out on a conservatory shot because of a distracted jury chairwoman, a concert pianist played by Catherine Frot. Years later the ex-prodigy (Deborah Francois, so good in “L’Enfant”) insinuates her cunning self into the life of her longtime nemesis, becoming nanny to the pianist’s son and, at a critical moment, the pianist’s trusted page-turner. But you just can’t trust a page-turner. That’s about it for sociological import. Francois manipulates with cold panache, and Frot suffers in style. Some find it gripping; I found director Dercourt’s placid and controlled aesthetic not so much airtight as airless. Still, it’s certainly watchable. In French with English subtitles. 9 p.m. Fri., AMC.–M.P.
`Syndromes and a Century’
(star)(star)1/2
(Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Thailand/Austria/France; 1:45)
A trippy, leisurely slice of two kinds of lives in Thailand–the first half set in a rural hospital, the second in a Bangkok one. The loose storyline for the first half revolves around the work and romantic life of a young doctor, who treats monks having nightmares about breaking the legs of chickens (but really is trying to score sleeping pills). The scene, with a male doctor and from a different perspective, is essentially repeated in the second, city half. But plot is almost beside the point here–Weerasethakul’s stationary camera puts us at a certain objective distance and he maintains a peaceful pace throughout. Two scenes, one a long bossa nova performance and the other a longer closeup of a tube sucking in smoke set to an ambient soundtrack, serve as invitations, or warnings, for this film. In Thai, with English subtitles. 4:30 p.m. Fri., LM.
–Scott L. Powers
`Severance’ (star)(star)(star)1/2
(Christopher Smith, U.K.; 1:36)
The anti-“Saw”: A slasher pic with an ingenious premise and a sly sense of humor. On a corporate team-building exercise somewhere in rural Hungary, the sales team of a British weapons manufacturing firm runs afoul of a psychopath of shadowy origin. Part of the Chicago fest’s “Late Night Screamings!” lineup, director Smith’s rollicking horror bash settles for some routine gore in the later scenes, but most of it’s a gas. Plus, there’s an outlandish sight gag involving a misfiring missile and an unlucky jetliner, as audacious as anti-American jokes get these days. 11 p.m. Fri., L.M., 8:30 p.m. Tue., L.M.–M.P.
`Just Sex and Nothing Else’
(star)(star)1/2
(Krisztina Goda; Hungary; 1:30)
A pat but agreeable variation on “Bridget Jones’ Diary,” this may be the first romantic comedy whose heroine is a dramaturge (literary manager, for you American plebes). Judith Schell can come work on my play anytime; the gravel-throated Hungarian actress portrays Dora, a bookish sensualist whose encounters with a variety of Lotharios lead her to seek instead for a man willing to father her child, no strings attatched. In Hungarian with English subtitles. 7:45 p.m. Fri., LM; 4 p.m. Sun., LM.–M.P.