Saw two more films at Sundance last night.
First I caught "Kiss Me Not On The Eyes", a Lebanese film made by a woman director who grew up in Beirut. The story follows a young woman in Cairo that is fascinated by sensual Arabic poetry, and is training to be a champion belly dancer, but cannot relax herself sexually enough to even sleep with her new husband. Every member of the audience gasped and cringed during the scene where an older woman makes her 12-year-old granddaughter respectable by "excising" her with a razor blade (a home makeshift surgery to cut out her clitoris). It turned my stomach when the credits of the film said 97% of the women in Egypt are excised.
Then I ran at breakneck speed to the Library Theater. I was 119th in the wait list line, but I caught a ticket scalper and made it into the midnight showing of "Wristcutters: A Love Story", a wonderful film starring Patrick Fugit, Shannyn Sossamon, and Tom Waits. In the film, Patrick Fugit commits suicide and ends up in a grimy parallel universe that is the world reserved for people who "offed". When he finds out the girl who broke his heart in the live world has "offed" as well, he sets out to find her on a road trip across a strange, gloomy, nonsensical world filled with bizarre characters. After the film I stood outside and talked to Cameron Bowen, who played a supporting role. We talked for a while and he struck me as a really nice kid.
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