Walking on Water
⋆⋆½ out of four stars
Not rated: Includes mild profanity. In English and subtitled Italian.
Theater: Lagoon.
The 2016 art installation titled "The Floating Piers," a bright yellow walkway temporarily constructed on the surface of Italy's Lake Iseo via a system of 226,000 buoyant, interlocking polyethylene cubes, was meant, according to the artist Christo, to create the illusion that visitors were literally walking on water. The loose, almost fabric-like structure of the piece undulated with the waves, like the back of some giant, serpentine sea creature on whose spine you were riding: a tame Loch Ness monster in marigold skin.
But as this part fascinating, part frustrating documentary makes clear, the experience was far from a purely aesthetic one. Once it opened in mid-June, after the preparatory screaming fits and arguments documented by filmmaker Andrey Paounov in the weeks leading up to the opening, there were long lines, intense heat and cold rain that organizers — and visitors — had to contend with.
Christo, who at the time was reported as saying that long waits were part of the experience, also describes "Piers" as something Zenlike on camera. And while it may have ultimately been so for some visitors, Paounov's film does not make it seem like very much fun. The same can be said about the movie itself.
Rather than focus on the engineering and logistics of "Piers," which sound really intriguing, the filmmaker trains his camera on general bickering and whining instead — about what kind of chain to use or about how to get Skype and other technologies to work right — to an almost unpleasant degree. Christo is a colorful character, with some very set opinions about how things should be done. But a little yelling goes a long way.
Only the last 10 minutes or so of the film make "Piers" look like something anyone might regret having missed. Otherwise, the documentary might make you believe in miracles, considering how tedious — if not impossible — this interactive artwork comes across.
Michael O'Sullivan, Washington Post
Lost & Found
⋆⋆⋆ out of four stars
Not rated
Theater: Lagoon.
The notion that what is lost will be found has a biblical ring to it, but this charming, gently amusing Irish film says things are not always that simple.
Written and directed by Liam O Mochain, this is an anthology of seven interconnected stories that will not fail to make you smile.
Holding everything together is the genial presence of O Mochain, who appears in several of the stories, as do many of the other actors, as the film's characters come in and out of one another's lives. It's a gambit calculated to make us feel like we live in the unnamed Irish small town where everyone knows more about everyone else's business than they should.
The film begins with a framing vignette, a day in the life of the lost-and-found office of the train station, set in a unprepossessing prefab building just outside the station itself.
O Mochain plays Daniel, a not overly ambitious young man on his first day on the job as a member of the staff. People dash in and out bringing in all manner of things, including an abandoned baby. Everyone, it seems, also brings in a story.
Those include "Ticket to Somewhere," introducing the elderly Eddie (Liam Carney) as a man who haunts the train station, asking for money so he can afford a trip to visit his wife and daughter, a trip he never seems to take no matter how many coins he collects. Daniel is at the center of "The Tent," where a story from his ailing grandmother, who as a child came to Ireland as part of the Kindertransport exodus from Germany, sends him on what may or may not be a wild goose chase. The film's closing segment, "The Wedding," brings back Sile (Aoibhin Garrihy), a peripheral character in an earlier segment, front and center here as a woman bound and determined to get married.
All in all, the characters are no smarter or luckier than they need to be, and their travails and coincidences manage to be just comic and human enough to make us happy for the time we spend together.
kenneth turan, Los Angeles Times
Most US students are recovering from pandemic-era setbacks, but millions are making up little ground
Malaysian climber who died near top of Alaska's Denali, North America's tallest peak, is identified
If these 3 restaurants aren't on your radar, they should be
