‘Undertow’ Director Creates Sweeping Ghost Story

Javier Fuentes-León didn’t know how his first film as writer and director, Undertow (Contracorriente), would play to a Spanish audience when it opened. He didn’t expect the standing ovation he got — nor did he expect to win an audience award at the Sundance Film Festival, or to be submitted as Peru’s official best foreign language Oscar submission.

Wolfe Video releases the film June 1 on DVD ($29.95) and Blu-ray Disc ($29.95). Special features include deleted scenes, behind-the-scenes featurettes and a Spanish-language PSA for GLAAD with Sofia Vergara (“Modern Family”).

“It was amazing to get that close [to an Oscar nomination] with my first film,” Fuentes-León said. “It's been a beautiful trip.” 

Javier Fuentes-León

Fuentes-León’s journey into filmmaking began in Peru, where he was born, raised and studied medicine for eight years. He knew he always wanted to do something related to the arts, but that wasn’t something that seemed like an option in Peru.

So he moved to Los Angeles and attended the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts), where he created the seedling for Undertow in the form of a short called “Mariela’s Kitchen,” based on a play he wrote, in which a fisherman walks into his home to find his wife and his lover, only his lover is a ghost and cannot be seen by his wife. In the play and short, the lover was a female prostitute; it was only later, when Fuentes-León himself came out as gay, that he changed the gender of the lover to male.

In Undertow, the same scene appears and serves as the lynchpin for the story — fisherman Miguel (Cristian Mercado) has been carrying on with painter Santiago (Manolo Cardona) in a small Peruvian fishing town in which Miguel is married to beautiful Mariela (Tatiana Astengo) and is a leader in his community, while Santiago is shunned for being openly gay. Mariela wakes up from a nap to find Miguel pallid as Santiago tells him he has been pulled under the sea by the undertow and has died, leaving him a ghost that only Miguel can see.

“My aim was first of all to make a personal movie,” he said. “It's not my autobiography, In my life there's nothing similar to the main characters, but I also had to struggle with the same dilemmas of coming out and the fear of losing the love of people around you.”

The film then follows as Miguel deals with the rumors that surround him and Santiago, with Mariela’s pregnancy and the birth of their son, and with his own sexual orientation and what it means to be a man. It’s a stunning film, both emotionally and visually, with wide, spectral shots of the Peruvian seaside and the sand blowing in the wind.

“Of course, I wanted a gay audience to be proud of it, to embrace it,” he said. “But at the same time, I didn't want it to just stay there. I wanted it to be seen by people like my parents and their friends, to have them enjoy the story, be moved by it and hopefully in the process of watching the movie, humanize this dilemma, people who have a sexual orientation that is different than the one most people have.”

Besides crossing over to a wider audience globally, Fuentes-León hoped it would play well in Latin America.

“Except for in cities like São Paulo and Buenos Aires, you don't go to other cities and see an open gay community — there's not a gay niche like there is in the U.S. or Europe,” he said. “A lot of gay people in Latin America are not out — they're afraid to be seen in a movie theater that evidently has a movie with a gay relationship.”

He said that while he finds the comparison “lazy and limiting,” he doesn’t mind if people call his film a Latin American Brokeback Mountain, in that it’s a love story between two men that live in a rural area.

“There's a function that all gay love stories are the same, so if a film told it already than another film is just the same,” he said. “But how many ‘boy meets girl, boy loses girl’ stories do we see? But at least they are not comparing me to a terrible film.”

The Undertow discs include 24 minutes of deleted scenes with additional explanation and foreshadowing that Fuentes-León cut for pacing, including one scene that deals more in depth with the religious undertones of the film.

“When we wrote it and shot it, it seemed like an important scene, but when we edited it, it seemed like it stopped the story for the writer to talk about religion,” he said. “It worked as a scene but it seemed like it stopped the story.”

Fuentes-León said one man in a Colombian focus group summed up his film best: “I think it is a movie about being faithful to yourself. No matter how big the obstacles may be, being faithful to yourself is worth it.”

 

‘Company Men’ Deals with Men and Job Loss

The idealized image of the American male includes working and providing for one’s family. John Wells’ The Company Men, releasing June 7 (prebook May 11) from Anchor Bay Entertainment, deal with what happens when that image is torn down due to corporate downsizing.

In the film, Ben Affleck plays a man who seems to have it all — a great job and loving family. But when his company lets him and several others go (including co-stars Chris Cooper and Tommy Lee Jones), the men must reevaluate what it means to be a provider for one’s family.

“It shows what it means to be a father and what men can mean to their families,” Wells said.

In the film, Affleck’s character then goes to work for his brother-in-law (Kevin Costner), installing drywall. Wells said his real-life brother-in-law lost his job and went through many of the emotions portrayed in the film, helping to inspire Wells to research and find similar stories, which inform several of the plot points of Company Men. Wells said he could relate inasmuch as being a freelancer working week to week.

“This is the first period of time in my adult life that millions of white-collar workers who’ve done everything they were supposed to do are feeling what a lot of blue collar workers have been feeling for 15 or 20 years now, which is insecurities in the marketplace,” Wells said. “I feel that all the time because I'm only as good and employable as the last thing I did.”

Wells shouldn’t have to worry much these days, having served as executive producer on such shows as “The West Wing.” He’s had the critical success of Company Men (74% on ), which was his film directorial debut; and now he’s working on Showtime’s “Shameless,” as writer and executive producer. The latter show also deals with family and father issues, as drunk Frank Gallagher (William H. Macy) avoids taking care of his six children. Wells says he likes exploring stories about fatherhood, about how and why people take care of one another and how communities form around those in need.

“One of the things people told me over and over again [in researching stories for The Company Men] was that people came around them to support them even when they didn't think they had a community,” Wells said. “One hundred and fifty years ago we were dependent on community. We’ve moved a bit away from that, but the reality is as things change, that’s exactly what we need to return to.”

The Company Men DVD ($29.98) and Blu-ray ($39.99) discs include a commentary with Wells, a making-of featurette and deleted scenes Wells said were taken out from the version that aired at the Sundance Film Festival.
 

Time Warner, IFC Launch Short Film Contest

Ever wanted to go to the Sundance Film Festival? Now’s your chance.

Time Warner Cable in association with IFC (lots of IFC news this week!) has launched the Time Warner Cable Short Film Contest, which will award four grand prize winners a four-night trip for two to the 2011 Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah. Video submissions are accepted from Sept. 15-Oct. 31 through Time Warner’s YouTube Channel ().

Entrants can submit two- to five-minute videos. Consumer voting takes place between Nov. 9-16, and winners will be chosen between the vote and a panel of expert judges, including filmmaker Joe Swanberg (Hannah Takes the Stairs), Ti West (House of the Devil), IFC and Sundance Channel president Evan Shapiro, ad IFC News host Matt Singer.

The prize packages include hotel, air and ground transportation, two tickets to a film screening at the festival, an invitation to a VIP party, a one-year subscription to Time Warner Cable digital cable and Road Runner high-speed Internet service, and $500 in spending cash.

New Indie Titles: ‘Five Minutes of Heaven’ and More

Title: Five Minutes of Heaven
Genre: Thriller
Studio: MPI/IFC
Street date: 4/27
Price/Format: $19.98 DVD, $29.98 Blu-ray

Liam Neeson stars in director Oliver Hirschbiegel’s Sundance award-winning thriller based on true events in 1975 Northern Ireland, and the conflict there between Catholic nationalists who wanted to end British rule of the region and largely Protestant loyalists. Three decades after the conflict, a man who was asked to kill a young Catholic nationalist must face the victim’s younger brother, who witnessed the killing, on a talk show.


Title: Easier With Practice
Genre: Drama
Studio: Breaking Glass
Street date: 4/6
Price/Format: $24.99 DVD

Based on a true story that was published in GQ, Easier With Practice stars The Hurt Locker’s Brian Geraghty in a Sprit Award nominated film about a writer who engages in phone sex with a mysterious woman he has never met, and for whom he comes to have feelings.


Title: Andy Kaufman: World Inter-Gender Wrestling Champion
Genre: Documentary
Studio: Infinity
Street date: 4/27
Price/Format: $19.98 DVD

Really, the name says it all — it’s a documentary about legendary comedian Andy Kaufman’s famed wrestling matches with women around the country.


Title: Hal Hartley’s Surviving Desire/Possible Films Vol. 2
Genre: Shorts
Studio: Microcinema
Street date: 4/27
Price/Format: $24.95 DVD each

Two titles from the vaults of director Hal Hartley (Fay Grim): One has the 53-minute comedy Surviving Desire, plus two short films; the other has five new short films from Hartley.


Title: The Queen and I
Genre: Documentary
Studio: Walking Shadows
Street date: 6/29
Prebook date: 5/25
Price/Format: $24.95 DVD

This is a documentary about two very different women coming to understand one another — one is the filmmaker, Nahid Persson Sarvestani, an Iranian exile who was part of the Communist faction to overthrow the Shah of Iran; the other is the Shah’s wife, Empress Farah Pahlavi. It’s nice to see relatively new company Walking Shadows take chances on challenging films, and this one’s a Sundance selection.

Patton Oswalt Shows Us His Dark Side in ‘Big Fan’

Those who have heard his comedy act know Patton Oswalt is one of the best comedians alive, revered by comedy snobs who respond to his out-of-nowhere riffs on KFC Famous Bowls, “The Christmas Shoes” and film producer Robert Evans’ sex escapades. I got the pleasure of seeing him in Los Angeles last year at an amazing, sold-out performance at the Largo Theater with fellow genius comedian Louis C.K.

The comedian gets his most notable lead role (unless you count voicing the rat in Ratatouille) in Big Fan, written and directed by The Wrestler writer Robert D. Siegel in his directorial debut. Big Fan hits DVD Jan. 12 at $26.99, from Vivendi Entertainment.

Oswalt says he doesn’t know if Siegel had him in mind when he wrote the role, but it’s not hard to see why Siegel chose him as New York Giants No. 1 fan Paul Aufiero. Oswalt perfectly encapsulates the kind of manner and lifestyle we associate with extreme fandom — working at a parking garage, living in his mother’s house at age 36 and writing out diatribes to recite on sports call-in shows late at night.

Oswalt, though, doesn’t exactly share his character’s pedigree.

“[Siegel] gave us reign to improvise, certainly, but what he realized very early was that I don’t know anything about sports,” Oswalt admitted. “But the stuff that was more personal, like the stuff between me and Marcia Jean Kurtz (who plays Paul’s mother), he was totally cool about us riffing.”

Some of the scenes between Oswalt and Kurtz are among the film’s most hilarious, with Paul teasing his mother about collecting soy sauce packets and his mother teasing him about never dating anyone, except his hand.

“I had never worked with any of [the cast] before, but they’re all such seasoned pros,” Oswalt says of the cast, which also includes Michael Rapaport and Kevin Corrigan.

Oswalt says he understands Paul’s obsession in terms of other media.

“I tend to get really wrapped up in pop culture ephemera — films, books and stuff like that,” he says. “I certainly understand that motivation and what makes people kind of subvert existence.”

After a string of TV roles — a nine-season run on “The King of Queens,” among them — Oswalt is humble about the reception Big Fan and the role has received.

“It feels great. I certainly didn’t expect it. I didn’t even know if we’d get a release after Sundance,” he says, referring to the 2009 Sundance Film Festival, at which the film premiered and was widely praised. “It got a lot of great reviews, but it didn’t look like we were going to get any kind of distribution. I felt really happy for [Siegel] because I knew the kind of hell he went through. It was just kind of gratifying all around.”

Oswalt’s latest comedy release, My Weakness is Strong, was released in 2009 in a DVD/CD combo pack from WEA/Reprise.

Spike Lee Joint Sets Off ‘Sundance Selects’

Thank you, Robert Redford. Rainbow Media, which bought Sundance Channel last year, is starting Sundance Selects Aug. 26 to offer Sundance favorites on demand, bowing with Spike Lee’s Passing Strange The Movie, which is based on a musical developed through Sundance and premiered at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival. Comcast, Cox and Cablevision are among the cable companies offering Sundance Selects, which is offering one film a month at first, and two films a month later on.

Future films offered that premiered at Sundance will include Alexis Dos Santos’s Unmade Beds (Sept. 9); Academy Award-winner Adam Elliot’s animated Mary and Max, which opened the festival (Oct. 14); and Chris Wiatt’s documentary A Complete History of My Sexual Failures (January 2010). Other films include two more documentaries: Kief Davidson’s Kassim the Dream, which premiered at the 2009 Tribeca Film Festival (Nov. 4), and Tom Thurman’s Nick Nolte: No Exit (Dec. 16).

“The hallmark of the Sundance brand is creating an environment of discovery, for both artists and for audiences,” Redford said. “Sundance nurtures new, independent voices in the creative realm, and is committed to bringing their work to larger audiences in new ways. Sundance Selects is a perfect complement to this mission and I am really energized about working with Sundance Channel and Rainbow Media on this new venture.” 

Lee had this to say: “It makes sense that Passing Strange The Movie will launch Sundance Selects, as Stew and Heidi Rodewald, the original musical’s co-creators, developed the project at the Sundance Theater Lab and Director Lab.  I’m pleased to work once again with Robert Redford, and with the Sundance Channel, on the launch of this new service.”

Folk like me without the funds to fork over for premium cable are lovin’ it like McDonald’s. This is probably the coolest thing Robert Redford has done since Indecent Proposal.

Sundance 2010 Acquisitions Wrap

The following is a partial list of buys at Sundance and their eventual home DVD/Blu-ray/digital distributors in North America, along with a pithy description of what the films promise, courtesy of the fine folks at indieWire:

Focus Features: Pariah (urban tale about the struggles of a black lesbian teen)
Fox: Another Earth (sci-fi romance), Homework (coming-of-age story with Freddie Highmore and Emma Roberts), Martha Marcy May Marlene (drama about a young woman overcoming an experience with a cult, with breakout Sundance star Elizabeth Olsen)
HBO: Project Nim (biography of a chimp raised as a human)
Lionsgate: Margin Call (financial thriller with Kevin Spacey, Paul Bettany, Jeremy Irons), The Future (Miranda July’s directorial follow-up to Me and You and Everyone We Know)
Magnolia: I Melt With You (drug-fueled road trip movie with Thomas Jane, Rob Lowe and Jeremy Piven), Page One A Year Inside The New York Times
MPI/IFC: Perfect Sense (romantic thriller starring Ewan MacGregor)
New Video: The Flaw (documentary on the current financial crisis, to be released by Docurama), The Last Mountain (David-and-Goliath doc about a small town vs. a coal company)
Oscilloscope: Bellflower (apocalyptic drama, in theaters this summer)
Paramount: Like Crazy (Grand Jury Prize winning drama about a young couple’s long-distance relationship falling apart)
Sony Pictures/IFC: Salvation Boulevard (religious comedy starring Pierce Brosnan, Marisa Tomei)
Sony Pictures/Weinstein Co.: The Details (dark comedy with Tobey Maguire, Elizabeth Banks and Laura Linney)
Sony Pictures Classics: The Guard (comedy/thriller with Brendan Gleason and Don Cheadle), The Greatest Movie Ever Sold (Morgan Spurlock doc) and Take Shelter (starring Michael Shannon)

Also, Feb. 18-March 3 film magazine Film Comment will screen 16 films that do not have U.S. distribution, including John Landis’ Burke and Hare, in a showcase of rare and rediscovered films, as part of the Film Society of Lincoln Center’s Film Comment Selects series at the Walter Reade Theatre in New York. IndieWire has the , and tickets can be purchased Feb. 3 at .
 

Katie Aselton, Dax Shepard Deliver ‘The Freebie’

A one-night stand seven years into marriage is proposed as the solution to a couple’s doldrums in The Freebie, coming to DVD Jan. 11 ($29.99) from Phase 4 Films.

Katie Aselton, a former Miss Teen USA contestant and current writer, director and actress, said the idea for the movie came to her while shooting the breeze with a friend.

“When you're having a glass of wine with a friend, those are the sort of things you talk about,” she said. “The point of what we were talking about was, ‘Remember how easy it was to be single ... and you could just be whoever you wanted to be?’ When you're in a relationship, you owe it to that person to talk over every single thing. Sometimes you just want to give your husband a fake phone number and say, ‘Don't call me.’”

Aselton was looking for something to sink her teeth into after not getting the kind of experience she wanted to as an actress. Her husband, Mark Duplass (writer/director of Cyrus, with brother Jay Duplass), suggested taking his approach — if you’re not getting the projects you want, come up with your own.

“I was just a frustrated actor who was just sitting around,” said Aselton, who may be exaggerating a bit — she and her husband co-star FX’s fantasy football TV show “The League.” “My husband, who’s a big do-it-yourselfer just said, ‘You should just do it on your own!’”

Aselton said everything fell into place from there, with Aselton in the lead actress role, but casting her male counterpart proved more difficult after the first actor didn’t work out. Dax Shepard of “Punk’d” fame came on board at the 11th hour. His addition proved crucial, as his performance has been garnering rave reviews after the film aired at Sundance.

“I met Katie for the first time about five hours before we started shooting,” Shepard said. “Our second day of filming was all of our intimate, bedroom scenes. I have no explanation as to why we had good chemistry, but I know that if we hadn't, the movie would have been very flat.

“We got lucky. She's awfully cute though, so that certainly helps.”

The situation for The Freebie’s Annie (Aselton) and Darren (Shepard) doesn’t quite go as planned, but Shepard thinks it could work for some couples.

“There are a couple billion relationships happening around the world, and I'm sure every conceivable permutation is being played out somewhere,” he said. “I don't think there is a ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ way to love someone.”

Despite coming up with the concept, Aselton is dubious of the prospect of infidelity working to strengthen a couple’s relationship.

“Beyond that first night, it's work after that,” Aselton said. “One night away from what you have now is probably not worth it, especially if you like what you have. The idea of exploring this couple that is sort of over-therapied in their own minds, where they think they are the couple who could completely sort of challenge tradition and monogamy and social ideas and they’re the ones who could rise above and beyond all that — I liked watching them fall on their ass.”

Of the DVD release, Aselton said home video means “everything” to independent films such as this one.

“Most of these small films, that’s where their life is,” she said. “It's hard to do well theatrically in the market today. For the most part, most of us do a theatrical release so we can get great reviews for a DVD release because that really is where we will find our audience. I think if people are going to be spending $14 for a movie, you're going to want to go see big productions … you're gonna see Inception.

“Unless you are a part of the small few who want to support independent film, you're going want to get your money's worth and then you'll save these small movies for the small screen.”

The Freebie DVD includes a commentary with Aselton and Shepard.
 

New Indie Titles, April 8: ‘Pretty Bird’ and More

Title: Pretty Bird
Genre: Comedy
Studio: Paramount
Street Date: 6/29
Prebook date: 5/18
Price/Format: $22.99 DVD
Reserve for purchase
Reserve on

The cast of this one alone is worth the price of admission — starring Billy Crudup, Paul Giamatti and Kristen Wiig, this Sundance Grand Jury Prize nominee is based on the true story of a group that seeks to invent and market the personal rocket belt.


Title: Beyond The Barbed Wire: An Artists View of the Holocaust
Genre: Documentary
Studio: ADA/Reality Entertainment
Street date: 5/25
Prebook date: 4/28
Price/Format: $19.95 DVD
Reserve for purchase
Reserve on

This documentary tells of Ben Altman, an artist and a tailor who survived numerous concentration camps in Poland, never seeing his family again. Altman eventually moves to San Francisco and becomes the tailor for the San Francisco Opera House. Upon retiring, his memories come out in the form of paintings. ADA/Reality Entertainment also release the WWI doc A War to End All Wars the same day at $19.95.


Title: Animation Express
Genre: Animated
Studio: Image
Street date: 6/8
Prebook date: 5/11
Price/Format: $29.98 DVD or Blu-ray
Reserve for purchase (DVD or Blu-ray)

A compilation of 26 animated shorts featuring award winners and other CGI, hand-drawn and stop-motion shorts, from the experimental to the traditional. The Blu-ray includes 13 additional shorts.


Title: MINE
Genre: Documentary
Studio: Film Movement
Street date: 5/4
Price/Format: $26.95 DVD
Reserve for purchase
Reserve on

From filmmaker Geralyn Pezanoski, South by Southwest winner MINE tells of animals abandoned then rescued during Hurricane Katrina. Appropriately, the short film Film Movement has chosen to include with MINE is La Vie D’un Chien, an American-made, French-language film about a potion that can temporarily change people into dogs.



Title: Squatterpunk
Genre: Documentary
Studio: Pathfinder
Street date: 6/8
Prebook: 5/4
Price/Format: $24.98 DVD
Reserve for purchase

Multiaward-winning Squatterpunk follows a young would-be gangster through the shantytowns of Manila in a wordless, hypnotic visual journey.

Wolfe Gets Rights to ‘Contracorriente’ at Sundance

Wolfe Releasing has acquired the rights to Contracorriente (The Undertow), winner of the Sundance Film Festival World Cinema Audience Award for Dramatic Feature at this year’s festival. The film comes from writer/director Javier Fuentes-Leõn, about a married fisherman in a small Peruvian village hiding his love for another man.
 
“We are thrilled to represent this touching story,” said Wolfe Releasing president Maria Lynn. “We are confident that all audiences will love this haunting and beautifully crafted film about forbidden love within the traditions of a small town.”

The film stars Cristian Mercado, Tatiana Astengo and Manolo Cardona as the lover. Cardono stars in the awesomely titled Telemundo series “Sin Tetas No Hay Paraíso” (Without Breasts There Is No Paradise) and also was in Beverly Hills Chihuahua.
 
Wolfe will screen the film at both mainstream and gay venues, including at film festivals, and on DVD, VOD and television, with a possible theatrical release

Props to Wolfe for continuing to release quality gay and lesbian films.