Today's MIFF picks are all about grit and glam. We've got a movie about two junkie degenerate brothers in Ecuador, a documentary about the lives of supermodels past their prime, and an exquisite British screen adaptation of a classic 1950s play. Twelve other films from Italy, Denmark, Russia, Canada, Colombia, Chile and Mexico also screen at the festival today. If you don't go see some movies in this town this week, we feel sorry for your provincial ass.
The Porcelain Horse
Brothers Paco (Francisco Savinovich) and Luis (Victor Arauz) have pawned many of their wealthy parents' possessions to score their next freebase high. During a particularly frantic low, punk rocker Luis decides they should steal their parents' prized possession - you guessed it - a valuable porcelain horse. The fiending Luis is like a whirling dervish, and the fight for the horse has dire and immediate consequences for the already suffering family.
Meanwhile, Paco is shacked up with Lucia (first-time actress Leovanna Orlandini), the gorgeous girl he's loved since high school. Unfulfilled in her loveless marriage and carrying a pretty intense monkey on her back as well, she suggests that she and Paco run off together. But soon the fact that they're cute but utterly useless drug addicts catches up with them as the house Paco inherited from his family quickly rots beneath their junkie feet. The mood becomes depressing, thick, and suffocating, as the young characters shuffle through each scene, dragging their overburdened parents, colleagues, and friends through the shit with them at every turn. The end of this Ecuadorian epic from director Javier Andrade is surprising to say the least. Showtime 9:45 p.m. at Regal South Beach Cinema. Tickets to all films are $12.
About Face
What happens when a supermodel is put out to pasture? This intriguing documentary aims to find out. Celebrated documentary filmmaker, still photographer, and Miami native Timothy Greenfield-Sanders interviews some of the most famous models of the last five decades. Paulina Porizkova dishes on the insecurities of her youth, Jerry Hall talks about fleeing Texas for France, Beverly Johnson recounts her experience as Vogue's first African-American cover girl in 1974, and Carol Alt talks about posing for Playboy at age 47. Isabella Rossellini, China Machado, Christie Brinkley, Marisa Berenson, Carmen dell 'Orefice and Christy Turlington also share their witty and illuminating insights. Showtime 7 p.m. at Coral Gables Art Cinema.
The Deep Blue Sea
In this emotional film, Rachel Weisz plays the lead as Hester Collyer in a film adaptation of the celebrated stage play by Terence Rattigan. Co-directed by the playwright himself, the movie tells the story of a woman torn between responsibilities to her husband and the passion her passionate affair with a Royal Air Force officer, played by Tom Hiddleston. Beginning with her attempted suicide, the footage skips back and forth in time to detail the affair and, ultimately, its bleak future, as Hester melts down into an emotional mess. Showtime is 7 p.m. at the Olympia Theater at the Gusman Center.
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