A cinematic delight in Philly

Cannes. Sundance. Tribeca. These are the film festivals that everyone knows about and every film buff longs to attend. But what about Philadelphia? With just a two-day sampling of the festival's offerings, I discovered that the 16th annual Philadelphia Film Festival offers a large amount of cinematic possibility, even if it is somewhat hampered by unexpected technical difficulties.

From the first film, the Taiwanese "I Don't Want to Sleep Alone," it was clear the festival wasn't going to show the usual multiplex fare. This film is about a very strange romance between a sick Chinese laborer and the Bangladeshi immigrant who nurses him back to health. Director Tsai Ming-Ling finds intimate moments between the stars, including an extended sequence in which the Bangladeshi places a packet of ice-cold juice on the convalescing man's forehead. The filmmaker's expertly composited film has a languid pace that renders its shocking imagery (such as when a mother masturbates her brain-dead son) hard to bear.

Controversy seemed to be a theme of many films chosen for the festival. The second film screened was the American indie "Day Night, Day Night?" a starkly shot story about a nondescript girl who becomes a suicide bomber in Times Square. The star, newcomer Lucia Williams, exudes anxiety as she walks through the New York streets with a bomb strapped to her. The high tension of these scenes is undermined by several cheap attempts to render her character and heinous mission sympathetic through awkward moments of humor.

No less disturbing is the American film "The Memory Thief," which centers on a loner who develops an obsession with the Holocaust, amassing a wide collection of survivors' filmed testimonies. Their pain becomes his ecstasy, and he soon believes that he is "the last survivor." The ambitious film falters, though, due to its lack of subtlety, exemplified in its eye-roll-inducing climax where the protagonist meets a neo-Nazi at a tattoo parlor. This flawed film, like "Day Night?" shows that the festival programmers sometimes chose shocking premises over actual content.

Revered Danish director Lars von Trier's 2006 comedy, "The Boss of it All," which is about a company boss who hires an actor to masquerade in his place while he secretly sells the company, presents a lighter note. While the film has the trappings of a typical comedy, von Trier uses the genre to craft a critique on his own pretentious cinematic style. Coupled with its more intellectual goals, the flick contains many truly funny moments, like when an actor reverently describes a contract as having "succinct and concise language." It effortlessly meshes many different comedic styles to create an example of challenging comedy at its best.

Unfortunately, the actual viewing of von Trier's opus was hindered by a smudge on the projector lens, which effectively obscured half the subtitles. This was not the only technical malfunction, either. "I Don't Want to Sleep Alone" was completely out of focus for 10 minutes before a desperate filmgoer yelled, "Focus!" And during a screening of a series of animated shorts called "Cartoons for Big Kids," a storm wiped out power, cancelling the showing entirely.

Even though some viewing conditions were less than ideal, the two best films of the festival were shown without a hitch. The first was the New Zealand romantic comedy "Eagle vs. Shark," which is about a fast-food worker named Lily, who falls in love with a video game fanatic named Jarrod. After the two get together at Jarrod's "Dress as Your Favorite Animal Party," Lily accompanies her new boyfriend to his hometown, where he plans to kill a high school bully. The genuine chemistry between the two leads makes the unbelievable story as moving as it is hilarious. Writer-director Taika Waititi's decision to have the aloof Jarrod live under the shadow of his athletic brother, who committed suicide, makes the picture more affecting than just another quirky Wes Anderson ripoff. If marketed right, this crowd pleaser may just be the "Napoleon Dynamite" of 2007.

The documentary "In the Shadow of the Moon" and "Eagle vs. Shark" could not be more different, though both are examples of the exceptional films shown at the festival. In the British documentary, directors David Sington and Christopher Ray make the story of the Apollo space missions fresh by focusing on the very human triumphs of the astronauts who made the journey to the moon. Each interviewee speaks in poetic terms about their adventures, with one astronaut saying that looking back on Earth made him realize that "We are the guardians of Eden." By juxtaposing insightful dialogue with pristine shots of the cosmos, the film captures the excitement and awe of this landmark event in human history.

With films from Taiwan and New Zealand to Great Britain and Denmark, spanning genres from thrillers to space documentaries, two days at the festival revealed the breadth of its offerings. If you can forgive the frequent technical malfunctions, even the most casual moviegoer will find lots to love. Forget about Cannes and Sundance. Thanks to the Philadelphia Film Festival, a world of movie delight is just a short train ride away from campus.