A modern love story

By Kevin Crust

May 11, 2006 12 AM PT

Times Staff Writer

VC FILMFEST 2006: The Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival concludes with the local premiere of “Americanese,” writer-director Eric Byler’s insightful drama about a couple’s inability to fully move on after breaking up. Based on Shawn Wong’s 1995 novel “American Knees,” the film covers territory often elided in more conventional relationship tales.

Raymond Ding (Chris Tashima) is a morose but likable Chinese American professor in his early 40s, possessed by a serious case of anhedonia. His ex, Aurora Crane (Allison Sie), is a newspaper photographer a decade younger who keeps her racial identity -- she has a Japanese American mother and a white father -- at arm’s length. Neither one seems capable of letting go emotionally, even as they become involved with others.

For Raymond, it’s a troubled fellow academic named Betty (Joan Chen), whose childhood in Vietnam has left physical and psychological scars. Aurora’s new beau, Steve (Ben Shenkman), is more a placeholder than an actual attachment, as she clings to Raymond’s lingering attentiveness.

Fine, understated performances and the self-assured way that Byler lets the film find its own rhythms, rather than setting into some template, result in a mature film of subtle complexity. Although the scope of Betty’s story overshadows the main drama in “Americanese’s” final third, it remains a substantial and rare look at relationships and Asian American identity.

Out of the past

Soumitra Chatterjee plays Narsingh, a proud Bengali taxi driver driven to extremes in Satyajit Ray’s redemptive drama “Abhijan,” part of the UCLA Film Archive’s “Out of the Past: Film Restoration Today” series. The 1962 film was a big hit in India but failed to receive a U.S. release.

Narsingh loses his license when he recklessly passes a vengeful local official in his prized 1930 Chrysler. Returning from Bihar to Bengal with his assistant Rama (Robi Ghosh), he meets a businessman, Sukhanram (Charuprakash Ghosh), who says he’ll set him up with a license in a nearby border town, but for an inestimable price.

There Narsingh falls for Neeli, a quiet teacher promised to another man. However, it’s Gulabi (Waheeda Rehman), a prostitute, who has a more profound effect on Narsingh as he is confronted by the cost of his actions. Joe Lindner from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Film Archive will be present to discuss contemporary preservation techniques.

A Swiss double

UCLA’s “Contemporary Swiss Documentaries” presents recent nonfiction films from Switzerland, a country more often associated with the making of watches and chocolate. Two double features this weekend complete the series.

On Friday, Donatello and Fosco Dubini’s 2001 documentary “Thomas Pynchon: A Journey Into the Mind of P.” attempts to unravel the mysteries of the enigmatic author of “Gravity’s Rainbow” and “Mason & Dixon.” Pynchon’s novels have earned him a revered position in American letters, but his reputation as a recluse has certainly added to his aura.

The Dubinis take a postmodern tack with Pynchon that is at times as elusive as the subject himself. As much time is spent with speculative “webmasters” fixated with everything Pynchonesque as with people who actually knew the man. The film’s bizarre quirkiness, however, has its charm, and the eventual hunt for photos and video of the publicity-shy writer hysterically resembles the quest for Bigfoot. The film screens with “Elisabeth Kubler-Ross: Facing Death” (2002), Stefan Haupt’s profile of the late researcher and author whose work pioneered attitudes toward mortality.

On Saturday, “Ombres” and “Point of View” screen.

Filmforum

“The Short Documentaries of Krzysztof Kieslowski” continues the 10th anniversary commemoration of the death of the influential Polish director. Over the next three Sundays, Filmforum presents programs of faintly seditious films that represent Kieslowski’s early evolution as a filmmaker.

Part 1 covers the years 1966-71 and features seven films focusing on the Polish people. “The Office” (1966) is an ironic view of a social security agency, shot with a camera hidden behind the counter. The wonderful, old faces of the pensioners is contrasted with the bleak bureaucracy in action. “Factory” (1970) covers a workday at a tractor plant. Kieslowski again uses bureaucracy -- here represented by countless meetings -- to underscore the disconnect between ideology and function. Also showing are “The Tram” (1966), “Concert of Requests” (1966), “From the City of Lodz” (1969), “I Was a Soldier” (1970) and “Before the Rally” (1971).

Independent

cinema

Writer-director Paul Bojack’s “Resilience” follows the downfall of a man whose anxiety over change stifles his ability to respond appropriately to its inevitability. Jimmy (Henry LeBlanc) works as a human resources manager at a company where a new boss is clearing out the deadwood, and his attempts to reassure co-workers proves his own desperation. When he helps out his troubled uncle, Hodge (Al Rossi), it triggers the ire of Hodge’s son, Andrew (Steve Wilcox), escalating a chain of events that leads to the realization of Jimmy’s worst fears. Shot primarily in L.A.’s Pico-Union district, the low-budget drama plays on the unease that plagues modern life.

VC Filmfest

* “Americanese”: 7 tonight

Where: JACCC/Aratani Japan America Theatre, 244 S. San Pedro St., Little Tokyo

Info: (213) 680-4462, Ext. 68, www.vconline.org

Out of the Past: Film Restoration Today

* “Abhijan”: 7:30 p.m. Tuesday

Where: James Bridges Theater, Melnitz Hall, UCLA

Info: (310) 206-FILM, www.cinema.ucla.edu

Contemporary Swiss Documentaries

* “Thomas Pynchon: A Journey Into the Mind of P.” and “Elisabeth Kubler-Ross: Facing Death”: 7:30 p.m. Friday

* “Ombres” and “Point of View”: 7:30 p.m. Saturday

Where: James Bridges Theater, Melnitz Hall, UCLA