This week in local theaters
FLOW: FOR LOVE OF WATER One of those charming little documentaries that make you question whether the human race is really worth preserving, Irena Salina's Flow: For Love of Water makes an urgent three-point case. First, much of the world has almost no access to clean water, and impractical privatization schemes in Bolivia and South Africa (among other areas) have deprived poor people even of this vital necessity. Second, even when there's water available, the bottled-water racket leads companies like Nestlé to package it and sell it back, causing lasting environmental damage to the places those companies are siphoning from. The last is the most frightening: We're using up the planet's water too fast, and very soon oil wars will be replaced by H20 battles. Salina's argument may trend alarmist—is it really necessary to call water "blue gold," per activist/author Maude Barlow's formulation?—but it rings terrifyingly true. Vomit-inducing shots of blood-red rivers running downstream from slaughterhouses prepare you for the shock of raw-sewage rivers. Aesthetics take a backseat to interviews, footage of water riots (no, really) and protests. Salina concludes with a cry for activism and intervention—but the case she builds is so devastating, the battle seems almost unwinnable. —Vadim Rizov (Opens Friday at The Belcourt; Paul Davis, director of the Division of Water Pollution Control, Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation, and Jorge Aguilar of Washington, D.C.-based Food and Water Watch will lead a discussion following the 7 p.m. screening Friday)
ROSEMARY'S BABY Hey, Nashville—wanna see how it feels to live in a condo? The mother of the '70s demonic-possession genre—a realm of internalized horror that today looks like a reactionary response by parents to their radicalized offspring—Roman Polanski's macabre black-comic shocker remains the ultimate in gyno-terror (and yes, we've seen Inside). Mia Farrow, distressingly pale and waiflike, plays the tony Manhattan mom-to-be whose unborn is a literal little devil; John Cassavetes, never cast better, is her wolfish husband, and Ruth Gordon proves a far scarier presence than special guest demon Anton LaVey. In his autobiography, Polanski says he reworked Ira Levin's novel to suggest a rational explanation for Rosemary's plight—basically, psychotic delusion—because he didn't believe in the concept of Satan. Here, as throughout his career, Polanski reverses the traditional horror form in which order is disrupted by a monstrous intruder. The social norm in Polanski's films is a veneer of sinister civility meant to cloak the cabals and conspiracies underneath—a not-unreasonable outgrowth of a childhood spent dodging Hitler's willing executioners. Rosemary's Baby is only the most obvious example, with its amusing parade of Black Mass homebodies. For giddy subversion, it's hard to beat Hope Summers, The Andy Griffith Show's neighborly Clara Edwards, chirping "Hail Satan!" —Jim Ridley (Oct. 25-27 at The Belcourt)
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