Tag Archives: Nuart Theatre

PIRANHAS

In PIRANHAS—directed by Claudio Giovanessi, and co-written by Roberto Saviano (based on his 2016 novel La paranza dei bambini)—we are back with the Neopolitan mob. Not in the Vele di Scampia housing project of Saviano’s Gomorrah, but deep in Naples’ centro storico district of Sanità, where 15-year-old Nicola (Francesco Di Napoli) watches Camorra henchmen strong-arm his mother’s dry cleaners… and a lightbulb switches on.

Resourceful, spontaneous, and embracing the flashiest live-for-today ethos of their environment, Nicola and his gang quickly join the ranks of neighborhood enforcers (“paranza”)—dispatching rivals, collecting protection money, celebrating with cocaine-and-bottle service at the club, and splashing out on new soccer uniforms for the local kids. Everyone is in over his head before he learns how to shave, but by the time Nicola senses the void opening at his feet, it’s too late.

Leading a remarkable group of young, first-time actors, Di Napoli captures this young gangster’s last days of innocence with an easy smile and complete confidence. Rather than ask them to memorize a script, the director held extensive pre-production conversations with his cast of teens—all locals. After discussing their character’s motives, actions, and the consequences of their behavior, the picture was shot in sequence. Saviano’s real life inspiration for Nicola—Emanuele Sibillo—was gunned down at the age of 19 and remains a folk hero in Italy.

PIRANHAS

Through August 15.

Nuart Theatre

11272 Santa Monica Boulevard, West Los Angeles.

Opens August 16:

Playhouse 7

673 East Colorado Boulevard, Pasadena.

Piranhas, from top: Francesco Di Napoli (right) and Pasquale Marotta; Di Napoli (top), Ar Tem (seated center), and Marotta (below Di Napoli); Viviana Aprea (walking, fifth from left); Di Napoli and Aprea; Di Napoli (right) and Marotta; Di Napoli and Aprea; Di Napoli (left) and Tem, foreground; The Piranhas book cover image © Farrar, Straus & Giroux; Di Napoli. Piranhas images courtesy and © the filmmakers, the performers, and Music Box Films.

DIAMANTINO

In DIAMANTINO—the new genre-busting farce by the writer-director team Gabriel Abrantes and Daniel Schmidt—women have all the power. Duplicitous, mendacious, self-dealing, disloyal, and—ultimately—loving, a distaff army circles and controls manchild Diamantino on his journey toward an ultimate singularity.

Since the title character in DIAMANTINO is a Lamborghini-driving, tax-cheating, sea-disaster-rescuing, soccer superstar billionaire from Portugal with a distinctive haircut, a disclaimer at the start of the film states the obvious: “No identification with actual persons (living or deceased)… is intended or should be inferred.” With the mental capacity and emotional register of a happy, clueless pre-teen, Diamantino imagines the pitch filled with fluffy puppies bounding through a field of pink foam. But once real life intrudes—his introduction to a boatload of refugees and the death of his father—our hero loses his mojo and becomes prey to every sort of manipulation this side of Doctor Moreau.

It’s no spoiler to reveal that Diamantino manages to find the happiest of endings—as all fantasies must—and the film itself won the Critics’ Week prize at Cannes last year. During its opening weekend at the Nuart, Schmidt will be on hand to discuss his work.

DIAMANTINO

Through July 4.

Daniel Schmidt special appearance

Friday, June 28, at 7:30 pm.

Saturday, June 29, at 7:30 pm.

Nuart Theatre

11272 Santa Monica Boulevard, West Los Angeles.

From top: Carloto Cotta and Cleo Tavares in Diamantino; Cotta as Diamantino on the soccer pitch; Sonia Matamouros and Natasha Matamouros with Cotta; U.S. film poster; Cotta and Tavares. Images courtesy and the filmmakers, performers, and Kino Lorber.

HALSTON

Nearly thirty years after his death, Halston—the master of American minimalism and fashion’s greatest cautionary tale—has finally received a documentary worthy of his contributions. Unlike the designs of its subject, the film is somewhat padded with yards of unnecessary material. But this should not deter its intended audience from enjoying the ensemble.

Directed by Frédéric Tcheng—the filmmaker behind documentaries about Raf Simons (Dior and I) and Diana Vreeland (The Eye Has to Travel)—HALSTON hits an early peak when, one after another, his core house models—dismissively labeled “Halstonettes” by Loulou de la Falaise—testify to the talent of the man who could throw a bolt of fabric onto the showroom floor and, within minutes, create the basis of a couture gown:

“[Wearing a Halston dress imparted] elegance and ease. A sense of owning power without being masculine. And honoring the body you have.” — Alva Chinn

“You were free inside his clothes.” — Karen Bjornson

“He took away the cage. You didn’t really need the structure as much as you needed the woman. He really based most of his collections on us girls.” — Pat Cleveland

So where did it all go wrong? Cocaine and Studio 54 may have started the slide—and in the film, jewelry designer and Halston confidante Else Peretti gives a hilarious digression on mind-altering substances and their use:

“We worked all night… we didn’t get high… yes, we smoked, but no hard drugs… well, maybe a little coke…”

Because when you’re working all night…

But the man who introduced Halston to Studio 54, illustrator Joe Eula, traces the designer’s fall to the delusions of grandeur that set in after the move to the Olympic Tower studio, with its lofty, across-the-street view of St. Patrick’s spires.

The irascible, amphetamine-dependent fashion genius Charles James, who briefly worked with Halston Limited, was—typically—incendiary:

“Halston is a middle-of-the-road man who’d be better as a buyer in a store, or a stylist. He knows how to select good things to copy. But his passion is to put his name on it, for which action the word ‘plagiarism’ is correct.”

In the film, Fred Rottman, a workroom supervisor at Halston, is quick to deflect:

“Halston didn’t copy. He took concepts of Charles James’ and relaxed them.”

Halston’s era—the 1970s and early ’80s—was a time of out-of-control franchising. A designer sold his name to and sometimes designed for an array of manufacturers, slapping the cachet of his or her moniker on, yes, perfume and handbags, but also bedsheets, luggage, rugs, car interiors, and—in Halston’s case—uniforms for Braniff Airlines and the Girl Scouts of America.

This obsession to design everything for everyone, trading “class” for “mass,” led to the sale of his company to a conglomerate—a subject the film spends far too much time on. Suffice to say, Halston lost his judgment: How could he imagine that Bergdorf Goodman would want to carry a brand that was also hanging on the racks at J.C. Penney?

The film includes interviews with the designer’s friends Liza Minnelli, Bob Colacello, Marisa Berenson, Iman, Joel Schumacher, Naeem Khan, and his niece Lesley Frowick.

HALSTON

Through Thursday, June 6.

Nuart Theatre

11272 Santa Monica Boulevard, West Los Angeles.

The director will participate in post-screening Q & A’s after the 7 pm shows on Friday and Saturday, May 31 and June 1.

On June 7, HALSTON will open at the Monica Film Center in Santa Monica, the Playhouse 7 in Pasadena, and the Town Center 5 in Encino.

See HALSTON, edited by Steven Bluttal, essays by Patricia Mears (New York: Phaidon, 2001).

From top: Halston at work in his Olympic Tower studio; Halston in the 1960s, photograph © Jean Barthet; the designer with Anjelica Huston—a frequent model for the house—and Liza Minnelli, photographs by Berry Berenson (2); U.S. poster; Halston in 1973 at 33 East 68th Street, New York City, photograph © estate of Charles Tracy. Images courtesy CNN Films and 1091 Media.

WERNER HERZOG IN LOS ANGELES

In support of the release of his new documentary MEETING GORBACHEV, director Werner Herzog is in town this week, making several public appearances.

MEETING GORBACHEV was co-directed by André Singer.

MEETING GORBACHEV, and conversation with WERNER HERZOG

Tuesday, April 30, at 7:30 pm.

Bing Theater, LACMA

5905 Wilshire Boulevard, Los Angeles.

Friday and Saturday, May 3 and 4, at 7 pm.

Nuart Theatre

11272 Santa Monica Boulevard, West Los Angeles.

WERNER HERZOG IN CONVERSATION, with career film clips

Thursday, May 2, at 7:30 pm.

Linwood Dunn Theater

1313 Vine Street, Hollywood.

From top: Meeting Gorbachev, Werner Herzog (left) and Mikhail Gorbachev; Gorbachev in Moscow in the late 1980s; Herzog in front of the Kremlin. Images courtesy of The Orchard and the Toronto International Film Festival.

FÉLIX MARITAUD IN SAUVAGE

In SAUVAGE—a scathing dramatization of a male prostitute’s decline and fall—the underground hides in plain sight, in the parks and back streets of Strasbourg. Starring Félix Maritaud as a 22-year-old hustler with no name (in interviews, writer-director Camille Vidal-Naquet refers to him as Leo), the film conveys with blunt force and clarity the haphazard reality of a group boys who—by necessity or expedience—have become dazed spectators to their own abjection.

As it turns out, this sense of distance is a vital requirement for the job. In the sex trade, the worker’s ego and subjectivity are useless during business hours. Leo’s fatal flaw is that he’s looking for too much life in “the life.” In love with a fellow hustler (Éric Bernard, as Ahd), Leo also likes to kiss his clients (another taboo), and is both ageist and unwilling to alter his habits. The idea of settling down with an older sugar daddy is nothing he can entertain for long. And as he plaintively asks a doctor who has just given him a poor bill of health, “Why would I change?”

Unwashed, unfed, and unloved, Leo and his tricks come and go throughout the night. In a touch Cocteau would appreciate, one of the johns—an angel of death—drives a black Jaguar, his periodic appearance heralded by a haunting piano interlude on the soundtrack.

Maritaud—already a young veteran of queer French cinema (Robin Campillo‘s BPM and Yann GonzalezKnife + Heart)—breaks the mold with a performance that reaches an unshakable core of desperation. This exclusive engagement of SAUVAGE at the Nuart ends on Thursday.

SAUVAGE

Through May 2.

Nuart Theatre

11272 Santa Monica Boulevard, West Los Angeles.

From top: Félix Maritaud in Sauvage; Maritaud (center) with two clients; Maritaud; with Éric Bernard (left); Maritaud. Images courtesy Strand Releasing.