Beyond the Multiplex

A gritty drama about teenage girls that's the talk of the festival set. Plus: Two documentaries about a nation driven mad by terrorism.

By Andrew O'Hehir

Read more: Andrew O'Hehir, Movies, Movie Reviews, Arts & Entertainment, Reviews, Beyond the Multiplex

Jan. 12, 2006 | I'm getting to hate those words "Based on a true story." As recent events in the publishing world have reminded us, they don't always mean what they purport to. And what was that, anyway? Are we such suckers, such TV-addled zombies eager to sink our teeth into the meat and gristle of unambiguous reality, that we've lost all concept of what art is, and what it's supposed to do? (Don't answer that -- I'm depressed enough already.)

Even a movie I raved about last week, Lajos Koltai's Holocaust film "Fateless," begins with that irritating phrase. I had two responses: First of all, no, it's not. "Fateless" is adapted from a work of fiction by Nobel laureate Imre Kertész, Hungary's greatest living novelist. And second of all, well, sure it is: Kertész himself was in the camps, and the Holocaust is "a true story." But for Christ's sake, isn't every remotely realistic work of art -- and some that aren't realistic at all -- based on a true story?

Maybe "Citizen Kane," "In Search of Lost Time" and "Ulysses" should all come labeled that way; their characters and stories are largely drawn from real people, real histories and real places, after all. I suppose if Nabokov published "Lolita" today, he'd have to appear on Oprah (or send some wig-wearing transgendered surrogate) to recite poetry and mumble darkly about his tragic, misunderstood love affair with the real 14-year-old Dolores Haze.

We've got a grab bag column this week as we try to stay abreast of a rising tide of winter indies, but what got me launched on this tangent was "On the Outs," a gritty, compelling little drama about three young women surviving, more or less, on the streets of Jersey City, N.J. I've got nothing bad to say about the movie, except that I hope people won't mistake the realism of its terrific young cast, and its low-budget, digital-video photography, with reality as such.

Yes, writer and co-director Lori Silverbush apparently talked to real girls in the New Jersey justice system, and the film is shot in one of the country's dreariest and most downtrodden urban areas. But this is storytelling, not documentary. If it has that itchy you-are-there feeling of reality, that isn't because it's "based on a true story." That's because it's successful storytelling, in the long tradition of Dickens and Zola and Eugene O'Neill and Martin Scorsese.

New York City and its environs have a long tradition of producing this kind of street-level realism; what we won't know for a while is whether Silverbush and co-director Michael Skolnik have more to offer than the impressive dirty-fingernails chemistry of "On the Outs." I guess the ur-NYC realism movie is Scorsese's "Mean Streets," actually a work of fine craftsmanship that marked the beginning of a great and widely varying career. It's almost impossible to count the filmmakers who drew exactly the wrong lesson from "Mean Streets," cranked out an energetic early film with lots of cursing and petty crime, and then pretty much fizzled out. Test cases might include Matty Rich ("Straight Out of Brooklyn," 1991), Nick Gomez ("Laws of Gravity," 1992) and Salvatore Stabile ("Gravesend," 1997).

This week, we've also got a devastating pair of political documentaries, explaining what happens when a nation abandons all pretense of democracy and due process in its panicked response to terrorism. (No, silly, they're about Peru!) Then there's a delightful and completely unlikely French love story, my mini-surprise film of the new year, and a loving tribute to the greatest photographer (many would say) of the 20th century. And all of it 100 percent true to my limited understanding of reality.

Next page: Teenage girls, foolish choices