For the Nashville Film Festival, there's clearly life after 40
by Jim Ridley
The proof of how far the Nashville Film Festival has come in, say, the past 10 years doesn't lie in its attendance, its expansion this year from four to six screens, or even the number of red-carpet events it was able to generate (at least one each night). A better barometer, appropriately enough, is a movie called Weather Girl that arrived late in the festival, with little advance word.
Ten years ago, Weather Girl would have been the NaFF's centerpiece: a disarming romantic comedy given modest marquee value by some TV guest stars (Mark Harmon, Jon Cryer). This year, it premiered in a Wednesday-evening slot on the next-to-last night. The point isn't that the movie was weak. On the contrary: It was an audience favorite, with an anchor-material lead performance (by appealing sitcom vet Tricia O'Kelley), potent chemistry among the three main players (including Patrick J. Adams and Ryan Devlin) and sharper-than-usual characters courtesy of writer-director Blayne Weaver.
But in years past, Weather Girl would've been the most heavily hyped movie at the festival, and this year it was simply part of the mix—which speaks well of the mix. Now 40, which in film-festival years is older than talkies, the NaFF that concluded last week at Green Hills seems to have found a formula for its future: something local, something national, something international, something retro, something musical—and very little of it likely to show up again in town on the big screen.
How much of this is due to new artistic director Brian Owens, and how much is the fruition of goals started under Owens' predecessor Brian Gordon, remains hard to tell. As Owens has said, this is a transitional year for the NaFF, as well as the movies and the country in general. The movies may have proved to be one of the few industries "unlinked" to the recession, as Terminator producer and NaFF panelist Gale Anne Hurd enthused. But risk-taking is in short supply, as last year's underwhelming international festival circuit and this year's lackluster Sundance showed.
Since those tributaries trickle down to regional festivals such as the NaFF, it's not surprising that the festival lacked a single conversation piece on the level of last year's In the City of Sylvia or previous NaFF highwater mark Werckmeister Harmonies—movies that put Nashville audiences on the same page with cinephiles the world over. (On the other hand, the momentous Cannes lineup announced last week, featuring world-cinema leading lights from Lars von Trier, Michael Haneke and Gaspar Noé to Johnnie To, Park Chan-wook and Tsai Ming-liang, bodes much better for 2010.)
What was surprising, though, was how much higher the average of the NaFF's selections has risen over the years. Almost without exception, the festival opener used to be one of the worst movies showing; this year's lead-off entry, the diverting Zooey Deschanel-Joseph Gordon-Levitt romantic comedy (500) Days of Summer, set a new benchmark for the fest. Similarly, the premiere William Shatner's Gonzo Ballet sounded like exactly the kind of vanity-project groaner that festivals book strictly for red-carpet sake. It turned out to be a pleasant surprise, with a refreshingly thoughtful and candid Shatner dropping his hambone-shill shtick.
The quality of the local entries, once the festival's biggest liability, has risen steadily too. Not every year will provide a Nashville-shot feature as remarkable as the Deagol Brothers' Make-Out With Violence, which claimed the NaFF's feature prize and two other major awards. But love it or hate it, it's clearly a movie that deserves inclusion in a film festival for its merits, not hometown head-patting. Its reception gave other local filmmakers something to shoot for, and it wasn't alone—witness the turnout for Tennessee-connected films as diverse as the fine Hal Holbrook drama That Evening Sun (winner of the NaFF's audience award) and Brent Leung's bitterly divisive AIDS documentary House of Numbers.
Complaints among audience members about this year's fest were few, limited mostly to the spotty selection of horror and other genre movies (always tough to find). While attendance was reportedly up this year—a small increase to 23,000—many NaFF veterans thought the festival seemed less bustling than in years past. The festival's unusual schedule, which runs midweek to midweek instead of weekend to weekend, has always somewhat affected its momentum. But it may be that by adding two extra screens, the NaFF has traded the excitement—and headache—of a congested lobby for smoother sailing and better traffic flow.
Next year, though, it may be back to Sardine City downstairs at Green Hills, with the promise of a sterling 2009 festival season and (knock wood, rub rabbit's foot) an economic turnaround, "unlinked" or not. Under enormous pressure to hit the ground running in a milestone anniversary year, artistic director Owens has already implemented one great idea for future NaFFs: a theme retrospective offering a different classic film each night, like this year's trawl through the Sinking Creek vaults. It's a clever way to expand the festival's range and audience reach, and it should give Owens the matchless movie lover a chance to show his imagination as a programmer.
Perhaps even better for the NaFF's long-term health, visitors seemed to have a ball—from Elvis Mitchell shopping for records at Grimey's to Prodigal Sons subject/filmmaker Kimberly Reed getting group hugs in the VIP tent, from pioneering woman director Claudia Weill basking in the delighted reception to her 1978 feature Girlfriends to We Live in Public's rock-star documentarian Ondi Timoner cueing up for endless iPhone photos with passers-by. (Here's hoping Timoner, a major talent, returns to NaFF with the Robert Mapplethorpe biopic she's writing.) Turning 40 is always held up as a big deal. But for Nashville's long-running film festival, there may be even more reason to get excited about 41.
Email jridley@nashvillescene.com, or call 615-844-9402.
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