Also this issue: Dark Grey Even for a Holocaust movie, The Grey Zone is bleak. -Cindy Fuchs The Wrong Song 8 Mile tells Eminem's story, but not as well as his music. -Elisa Ludwig New Continuing Repertory Film Showtimes firstlook The Bridge -Sam Adams

November 7-13, 2002

screen picks

by Sam Adams

Esther Kahn (Wed., Nov. 13, 7:30 p.m., $6, International House, 3701 Chestnut St., 215-895-6542, www.ihousephilly.org) Vaguely akin to the formalist switcheroo Claude Chabrol played on the thriller genre with Merci Pour le Chocolat, Arnaud Desplechin's Esther Kahn seems determined to tell the story of an ambitious young starlet without ever once letting us see the fire beneath the grimy exterior. Summer Phoenix's Esther, born to a crowded Jewish household in Victorian London, isn't merely shy; she's practically agoraphobic. When the children she shares her house with -- it's not clear that they're all related -- start musing on their deepest desires, a young Esther turns away, then says quietly to herself, "I want to be revenged." When an (unsubtitled) Yiddish theater performance captures her imagination, she sets her heart on the theater, but the narrator keeps having to pop in to assure us that Esther is making a success of herself, since Phoenix seems just as sullen and inexpressive onstage as off.

Shown at International House at its unedited, 163-minute length (the theatrical version plays some 20 minutes shorter), Esther Kahn has its aimless, novelistic qualities, but if you're going to read a novel, you shouldn't settle for the Cliffs Notes. Most memorable is the series of scenes where Esther is instructed by a third-rate actor played by Ian Holm. Holm's instruction that Esther needs to live life in order to act it borders on cliche, but Phoenix allows no sentiment to creep into the scene where, following his advice, she loses her virginity. (She puts her hand between her legs, and when it comes out bloody, whispers, "I've done it.") The simplest moments are also the most striking, as when he tells her to walk across the stage, and make "every step... more unbelievable than the one before it." Desplechin wants to approach the mystery of acting without succumbing to rote generalities; Esther says, "I'm trapped inside myself," but you never see her escape the trap.

The Chinatown Files (Fri., Nov. 8, 7 p.m., $10, Prince Music Theater, 1412 Chestnut St., 215-569-9700, www.princemusictheater.org) I've done a lot of reading about McCarthyism and the blacklist, and rarely found more than a mention of the persecution of Chinese immigrants, but it's hardly surprising that it was pervasive, given the U.S.'s thorny relationship with Mao. Amy Chen, an NPR veteran who will present her film at this Scribe Producer's Forum, takes too long laying the groundwork; the hour-long documentary is almost half over before she gets past WWII. Still, Chen uses stock footage with uncommon thoughtfulness (though the score's on-the-nose evocations -- big band music for wartime montages, etc. -- detract from it) and tracks down a number of fascinating stories. She doesn't shy away from avowed Communists who genuinely felt a people's republic was the best answer to China's ills, but of course, not all of the government's targets (to say nothing of their methods) were legitimate. (And their intelligence was hardly infallible: One man says that agents knocked on his door to make sure he wasn't in Cuba aiding Fidel.) An overlooked story whose need to be told is self-evident, The Chinatown Files makes a worthy contribution.

[an error occurred while processing this directive]

Destiny (Fri., Nov. 8 and Sat., Nov. 9, 7 and 9:30 p.m., $7.50, International House, www.youfilm.com) As chronicled in a City Paper article in February 2002, Sam and Kim Ung both escaped genocide in Cambodia, although many members of their family did not, and they must have poured quite a bit of their own money into making the 35mm Destiny. But the film is so far from their, or anybody's, story that any potential impact is squandered. Joe (Brian McCarthy) is an unemployed civil engineer who has bounced back to the U.S. after his Cambodian wife was killed during a gunfight between Khmer Rouge and government troops. Finding work at an appliance store, he falls for the owner (Courtney Costello), and once her jerkoff boyfriend is out of the way, they marry, which is all well and good until Paula (Angela Tom), Paul's Cambodian wife, turns up alive and looking for him. This is more the stuff of Lifetime movies than serious drama, and the wooden acting doesn't help. When she finally does turn up -- and the movie takes its time even letting us in on Joe's past -- Angela is, paradoxically, the least fleshed-out of the characters, switching between faithful wife and spurned ex. Considering the film's specific and no doubt heartfelt origins, it's a pity it's constructed around a storyline so generic.

Orpheus (Sat., Nov. 9, 2 p.m., Philadelphia Museum of Art, 26th St. and the Parkway, 215-684-7605) Cocteau's fantasia opens a Saturday afternoon screening series to go with the Art Museum's exhibit "Giorgio de Chirico and the Myth of Ariadne," although exactly what links movies like Fellini's Satyricon (Nov. 23) and Hitchcock's Strangers on a Train (Dec. 14) isn't clear. But hey, you wanna watch the movies, or you wanna complain? Also in the series: Death in Venice (Nov. 30), The Spider's Strategem (Dec. 7) and The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (Dec. 21).