FilmFest KC

The Holy Girl In this drama from Argentina's Lucrecia Martel (La Ciénaga), Amalia, a teenager living in her family's decrepit resort hotel, is groped by a fortyish visiting doctor during a street concert. Stimulated by her sexually experienced friend and her own increasingly feverish religiosity, the sullen girl makes "saving" the doctor her avocation. Meanwhile, her attractive mother resists the temptation to seduce him herself. Martel's tendency to eschew wide or establishing shots leaves her camera hovering at the backs of her characters' necks or reclining next to them, evoking an intimacy that blends sensuality with the nearness of the divine. Half-heard murmurings and girlish gossip, as well as preparations for a physicians' conference demonstration, build tension in this story of the sacred and corrupting implications of the laying on of hands. (F.L.)

Iron Island The second feature by Iranian director Mohammad Rasoulof is an obvious allegory, but it's an unusually vivid, even visceral one for being set almost entirely on an abandoned oil tanker — a corroded planet adrift in the azure cosmos of the Persian Gulf. It's a floating neighborhood populated by an assortment of cute kids, busybody octogenarians and women masked in stylized burkas. Giving advice and delivering orders, Captain Nemat (Ali Nasirian) is the father of his "tenants." His name echoes Jules Verne's Captain Nemo, but he assumes the more primally patriarchal roles of Abraham, Noah and Moses. There's a timeless, elemental quality to the situation, but Nemat's reign is not without incident; his boat, as he is loath to admit, is taking on water. Depending on one's mood, the movie might seem poetic or prosaic. Either way, Iron Island poses the questions that were always asked of movies produced behind the Iron Curtain and later in China: How was it shown at home, and what does it mean there? (J.H.)

La Petite Jérusalem Set in Sarcelles, a low-income Orthodox Jewish community in Paris, French writer-director Karin Albou's first feature film is the story of two sisters. Mathilde (Elsa Zylberstein) is a devout wife and mother who embraces the laws of her faith. She lives in an apartment with her husband; her four young children; her mother; and her sister, Laura (Fanny Valette), who studies Kantian philosophy, which exalts reason over all else. Mathilde's marriage is deteriorating because she believes that her religion forbids sexual pleasure, whereas Laura believes that passions must be subordinated to rational thought. On one level, the film examines the sexual awakening of both women. It also looks at the animosity between Arabs and Jews when Laura falls in love with a young Algerian man she meets at work. This is really Laura's story, and Valette does a superb job of communicating both her character's intellectual struggles and her emotional fragility. (J.O.)

Lemming Exhilaratingly anxious, Dominik Moll's film charts familiar territory with gravity, inventive iconography and spooky rhythms. It's a savory psychodrama and a triumph of unsettled reaction shots. The comfortable affluence of an inventor (Laurent Lucas) and his gamine of a wife (Charlotte Gainsbourg) is beleaguered first by his boss (André Dussollier) and the man's semi-psychotic wife (Charlotte Rampling), then by the metaphoric torque of a semi-living lemming found in their kitchen-sink drainpipe. Suicide, could-be hauntings and betrayal follow. Moll's achievement is all in the backbeats and portents, and the result is less like Hitchcock than like Lynch. The wallop of disquiet is delicious. (M.A.)

Look Both Ways An unassuming, unadventurous but likable dramedy about dying and grief, Sarah Watt's debut feature has pleased audiences in Australia and abroad. It's not hard to see why — rename it Death, Actually, and a sense of its fluffy, faux-angsty approach is brought to bear. Previously a watercolorist-animator, Watt punctuates her film with mordant painterly imaginings, of both the mortality-obsessed artist-heroine (the refreshingly plain Justine Clark) and the cancer-haunted photographer-hero (William McInnes), detailing demise via sudden earthquakes, derailed trains, car crashes, etc. Unfortunately, Watt should've won the Aussie award for Most Frequent and Obnoxiously Lengthy Song Interludes, without which her film might've clocked in at 25 minutes or less. (M.A.)

Moolaadé This visually gorgeous morality tale was written and directed by Ousmane Sembene, considered the father of African cinema. In a small village in Africa, four girls resist ritual "purification" (read: circumcision) by taking refuge at the home of a courageous woman named Collé (Fatoumata Coulibaly). Collé grants the girls moolaadé, a form of protection that can't be broken by other members of the community. A conflict erupts, pitting women against women, women against men, husbands against wives, and young against old — and getting at the core values and power relationships within a tightly knit society. Though the pace is patient, true to the rhythms of life in the village, this beautifully shot movie seems to fly. (M.L.)