FREE
Cine-Brunch: Mutual Appreciation
Sun., August 09, 2009 / 12:30 PM
Audio / Video
Gallery
About This Event
Minimum Age:
18+Doors Open:
12:30 PMShow Time:
1:00 PMDescription:
“If John Cassavetes had directed a script by Eric Rohmer, the result might have looked and sounded like "Mutual Appreciation." Indie auteur Andrew Bujalski ("Funny Ha-Ha") has studied his mentors closely -- Mike Leigh and Jim Jarmusch are among his other obvious influences -- and put whatever lessons he learned to good use in this unaffectedly naturalistic and appealingly quirky low-key comedy about twentysomethings in the process of inventing themselves.”—Joe Leydon, Variety
“I bet Andrew Bujalski is sick of reading that he’s the voice of his generation, when most of that neo-slacker demographic has never had the opportunity to see his films. Like Funny Ha Ha, Mutual Appreciation is hardly your standard Amerindie … it’s shot on 16mm black-and-white, thus confirming Bujalski’s allegiance to a strain of maverick films—Shadows, Stranger than Paradise, Clerks—that bring poignantly accurate renditions of subcultures of which their directors have intimate knowledge to otherwise homogenized screens..”—Amy Taubin, Film Comment
“You might think of Mutual Appreciation as an emo cover of Godard’s Masculine/Feminine: a meditation on the crisscrossed subjectivities of boys and girls, their mutual comprehension or lack thereof. Bujalski makes intuitive portraits of his people from the inside out rather than fixing them into a conventional drama. If his improvisational flux seems slightly random—each scene finding its own idiosyncratic entry and exit points, its own stubborn, singular rhythm—a closer look reveals coherent symmetries at play. In Mutual Appreciation, watch how Bujalski comments on hetero befuddlement with a pair of gender-switch conceits. Early in the film, Lawrence is invited to participate in a theater event where men read aloud monologues written by women. Later, an extremely drunk Justin stumbles into a house party where three feisty girls proceed to dress him up in drag. The movie is full of such deft patterns.”—Nathan Lee, Slate
“Bujalski is making what may prove to be the defining movies about a generation, which is to say my own, marked by its very lack of definition.”—Scott Foundas, LA Weekly “..shows the influence of Cassavetes and early Godard, but it’s also very much of the moment.” —Ty Burr, The Boston Globe
“I bet Andrew Bujalski is sick of reading that he’s the voice of his generation, when most of that neo-slacker demographic has never had the opportunity to see his films. Like Funny Ha Ha, Mutual Appreciation is hardly your standard Amerindie … it’s shot on 16mm black-and-white, thus confirming Bujalski’s allegiance to a strain of maverick films—Shadows, Stranger than Paradise, Clerks—that bring poignantly accurate renditions of subcultures of which their directors have intimate knowledge to otherwise homogenized screens..”—Amy Taubin, Film Comment
“You might think of Mutual Appreciation as an emo cover of Godard’s Masculine/Feminine: a meditation on the crisscrossed subjectivities of boys and girls, their mutual comprehension or lack thereof. Bujalski makes intuitive portraits of his people from the inside out rather than fixing them into a conventional drama. If his improvisational flux seems slightly random—each scene finding its own idiosyncratic entry and exit points, its own stubborn, singular rhythm—a closer look reveals coherent symmetries at play. In Mutual Appreciation, watch how Bujalski comments on hetero befuddlement with a pair of gender-switch conceits. Early in the film, Lawrence is invited to participate in a theater event where men read aloud monologues written by women. Later, an extremely drunk Justin stumbles into a house party where three feisty girls proceed to dress him up in drag. The movie is full of such deft patterns.”—Nathan Lee, Slate
“Bujalski is making what may prove to be the defining movies about a generation, which is to say my own, marked by its very lack of definition.”—Scott Foundas, LA Weekly “..shows the influence of Cassavetes and early Godard, but it’s also very much of the moment.” —Ty Burr, The Boston Globe
Artists
Q&A featuring director Andrew Bujalski