My Dad Is 100 Years Old (2006)

To the images of Guy Maddin, Isabella Rossellini plays multiple characters to reflect on the work of her father, filmmaker Roberto Rossellini. Now let me just say that I have no issue with the subject of Roberto Rossellini and indeed at times even this look at it delivered glimmers that made me want to find out more, problem is that they were only glimmers. What the rest of the film does is labour heavily in pretension, bad acting, bad scripts and nothing in the way of image or substance to make it worth seeing.The narrative is essentially a couple of dialogue scenes that discuss the man, the film industry and his films but all these dialogue scenes are held with Rossellini in all of the different roles (apart from the physical role of her father's belly). Saying it like this makes it sound like it might be OK but trust me that it is not. Most of the dialogue is terrible and it is not helped by the fact that for the majority of her performances Rossellini is terrible – really terrible. Ironically the only parts of it that works are those that are essentially Isabella delivering to-camera like she is being interviewed; why she didn't just do a film where she did talk to camera about her father and intersperse it with other comments and clips of relevance I'm not sure.Perhaps she wanted something more creative in honour of her father and perhaps this is why her friend Maddin directed. Now unlike many I do mostly like the work of Guy Maddin –weird it may be but it is wonderful at the same time. Here though he seems to do nothing anywhere close to the creativity of his other films that I have seen – in fact if I hadn't seen his name on the credits then I would never have guessed it was one of his. Given how weird his films tend to be perhaps it was Isabella's crass and obvious dialogue scenes that sucked the creativity energy out of him – how can one be imaginative when your actor is saying such obvious drivel? Clearly this is a very personal film to Isabella Rossellini and I can only hope that she can look at it with pride that it does for her everything that she wanted. However for me all I got was the impression of a film made too heavily by a writer too close to the subject and a director seemingly happy to let her have her way. Poor and very disappointing for anyone expecting this to be a "Guy Maddin film" because it really is not.

Thursday June 1, 6:30pm The Harvard ExitRoberto Rossellini's The Flowers of Saint Francis is resplendent in its simplicity. Seeing the film on a big screen is an unparalleled experience. The short film preceding it, is another matter. My Dad Is 100 Years Old is a love letter written by and starring his daughter Isabella. Within seconds the phony, pretentious technique of this short identifies it as the work of none other than Canadian poseur and wannabe auteur Guy Maddin. Imagine going to the home of a fabulous chef for what will certainly be an incredible meal. The guests are seated and wait with anticipation for the coming feast. Wine is served, candles are lit and the mood reaches an anticipatory climax. At that moment, the chef's child leaps onto the table and with great delight lays a giant smelly turd. It can certainly be removed and forgotten, somewhat, but avoiding the incident altogether would have been preferable.

It seems odd the choice of Guy Maddin for the direction of this homage by Isabella Rossellini to her late father, Roberto, one of the great masters of the Italian cinema. Mr. Rossellini was a man who presented the material he wanted to show without gimmickry. Guy Maddin, on the other hand, loves to tell a story using imagery that Rossellini would have probably not approve because the lack of realism in his films.That said, this short documentary, written by his daughter Isabella, an intelligent actress, presents her father as a figure that was in bed most of the time. Ms. Rossellini's tribute comes in the form of an exchange among the great director and David O. Selznick, Federico Fellini, and Alfred Hitchcock, as these innovators tell Rossellini how their ideas differ in what they consider what cinema should be like. Charlie Chaplin pays a furtive visit, as well as Ms. Rossellini's mother, Ingrid Bergman. When she asks her mother if her father ruined her Hollywood career, she answers, that no, it was she who ruined his.Isabella Rossellini acts all the parts in this short, but emotive tribute to an innovator who was way ahead of the others and who, unfortunately, was forgotten toward the end of his life. The combination of Ms. Rossellini's writing and Guy Maddin direction serve the documentary well.

I don't know what Rossellini would have thought of Guy Maddin's work. Personally, I loved "The Saddest Music in the World", but as an artist, he can't be any more different from Rossellini. Where Rossellini was obsessed with portraying reality and the lives of ordinary people, Maddin is interested in the avant-garde and stylistic excess. This short (it's only 10 minutes), narrated by Isabella Rossellini (who is the daughter of the great director and a frequent collaborator with Maddin), is a highly personal love letter from daughter to father, and it's beautiful.Daughter Rossellini acknowledges the troubles her father faced and knows that he was a complicated man. He said himself "All my films were a battle." At the beginning of the film she asks "Was he a genius?" She then goes on to portray Hitchcock, Selznick, and Fellini arguing with her father about the nature of cinema. Father Rossellini is portrayed by a giant belly. Yes, a giant belly, this being an aspect of her father that she remembers with fondness. In one particularly self-reflexive and funny scene, daughter Rossellini scolds Maddin and asks him to bring down his camera from high up, stating that her father would never have allowed for such pretensions in cinema. It's a sign of deep respect on Maddin's part that he lowers the camera, something not often seen with directors paying homage.She closes the short with a head-on shot, stating that although she does not know if her father was a genius, she does know one thing- that she loves him deeply. Just lovely.cococravescinema.blogspot.com