BAM last year, during a mini-fest devoted to the work of this interesting filmmaker, now's your chance. Rodrigues' longest and most-heralded film so far, 2009's To Die Like A Man, tells of the travails of Tonia, a transvestite on her way to full transgenderation. The film opens with a young man applying... make-up? Or is it war paint? Then we cut to the shot of a spider in her web and then to a pair of soldiers, one of whom is that young man again, in camouflage, on a mission or perhaps part of a military game. Strange, very bad things happen, but, as usual with Rodrigues (shown below), you are not always certain what is real.
That lover's a druggie, and so the two squabble, make up, and squabble some more. He's off drugs, then back on. And when s/he gives the kid a blow job, be breaks it off mid-suck.
L'avventura (with Tonia standing in for the missing Anna).
Meek's Cutoff, which has probably recevied the best reviews of any film to open this year (bettering even those of Uncle Boonmee!) and is a not-uninteresting but flat presentation in which everything, including the fact that the future is unknowable, is spelled out; and To Die Like A Man, which is consistently fluid and tantalizing, dreamlike and transgressive, but user-friendly only to those who simply give over many of their pre-conceived notions. Both should be seen, and will be. But only the first of the two, I suspect, will haul in the "mainstream art film" crowd. A shame.
Strand Releasing, opens in New York today at the IFC Center. It may be coming other theaters, though as of opening day, the company offered no information about the movie on its own web site -- other than the title.
Last year, I covered the Rodriguez' fest at BAM and had a short interview with the director. You can find that post -- and interview -- here.