Beyond the Multiplex

Fast forward: Visit "Bergman Island"! The umpire strikes back in "Off the Black"; "Family Law" offers love, Argentine style

My schedule has been too smushed to catch "Bergman Island," documentary filmmaker Marie Nyreröd's interview with David Lynch's No. 1 hero, 88-year-old Ingmar Bergman, on the island home he now plans never to leave again. Suffice it to say I'll find a way to get to New York's Film Forum to catch it this week, if I have to burrow in from the Varick Street subway station, and I know some of you will be with me. (Other engagements should follow.)

Also opening this week is "Off the Black," a subdued coming-of-age picture in a classic Amerindie mode, starring Nick Nolte in one of his crusty local character roles. This time Nolte is Ray, an aging, alcoholic high-school baseball umpire who forges an uneasy friendship with the teenager who vandalizes his house one night. The almost girlishly handsome Dave (Trevor Morgan) is a star pitcher whose team loses a game Ray has umpired, but the poles of their relationship reverse when he realizes that Ray is actually a lonely, sentimental drunk -- who wants Dave to pose as his son at a high school reunion.

Written and directed by James Ponsoldt, "Off the Black" is restrained and graceful, giving us only minimal information about Ray and Dave outside their scenes together. Ray was married and has a real son somewhere, Dave's mom bailed out a few years ago and his dad (Timothy Hutton) can't talk about it, or much of anything else. In fact, I think the movie is so restrained, and holds back so much on conventional plot and characterization, that its emotional impact is severely blunted. Nolte is excellent, I suppose, but we've seen this damaged-American-dude shtick from him before. (Opens Dec. 8 in New York and Los Angeles; Dec. 15 in Chicago, Minneapolis and San Francisco; Dec. 22 in Boston, Philadelphia and Washington; Jan. 5 in Salt Lake City; Jan. 12 in San Diego; and Jan. 19 in Athens, Ga., with more cities to follow.)

More cheerful, but at about the same middle-interest level, is "Family Law," an alternately charming and frustrating comic entertainment from Argentine writer-director Daniel Burman. I'm a big fan of Argentine cinema in general, but this is not up to the recent standard of Fabián Bielinsky's "The Aura," Lucrecia Martel's "The Holy Girl" or Pablo Trapero's "Rolling Family," a vastly superior comedy.

It's great to see Arturo Goetz, one of that nation's finest character actors, playing "Doctor" Bernardo Perelman, a cheerfully cynical Buenos Aires Jewish lawyer, operator and all-around bon vivant. But the film is supposed to be about his relationship with his son Ariel (Daniel Hendler), a repressed, uptight public defender who sleeps with his suit on, and -- as that suggests -- is a lot less interesting than his father. You can say that "Family Law" is sweet-tempered and nonjudgmental, and handles this comic soap-opera material much more elegantly than a similarly themed Hollywood movie might. I guess that's why this is Argentina's official Oscar candidate. (Opens Dec. 8 at the IFC Center in New York, Dec. 14 in Boston, Dec. 22 in Los Angeles, Dec. 29 in Chicago, Jan. 20 in Oklahoma City, Jan. 26 in Seattle, Feb. 9 in Albuquerque, N.M., Feb. 16 in Washington and Feb. 23 in San Francisco. Also available pay-per-view on certain cable TV systems; check local listings.)

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