10 May 2008

Encontros I: TriBeCa Film Festival

Sunday was the last day of the TriBeCa Film Festival. Madrid and New York met and report.

The New Yorker's view:These are hottest tickets in town, long gone before one can decide which movies to watch, but a very generous offer of two open tickets prevented the irremediable loss. Ready to start the adventure we chose to watch the winner of the Best Narrative Feature, the festival's equivalent to the Oscar for Best Picture. Let the Right One In brought a new twist to a story about vampires. The film is a tale about every day life and about coming-of-age, but also about blood and revenge. In the jury's comments: “[a] mesmerizing exploration of loneliness and alienation through masterful reexamination of the vampire myth.”


The Madrid visitor's view: Who would say that on Friday morning while strolling around TriBeCa, camera in hand, we would actually get our “from yellow cab to red carpet” moment the next Sunday. But that’s NY. My friend R has a friend, who has a brother, who does volunteer work at the Festival and got us two hot open tickets. Still thrilling with excitement we chose to watch the winner of the Best Narrative Feature – no less – the Swedish film Let the Right One In, by Tomas Alfredson. Based on a novel by Lindqvist, it is a story about first love between 12-year-old kids, a bullied boy and a vampire girl, both handicapped in their own way. The story was great food for thought about loneIiness, alienation and ultimately about power and dependence. Also very interesting for me was seeing the audience’s reaction to this European film, as they focused on the sweetness of kids falling in love, rather than on my darker thoughts about alienation. To sum it up, a good display of New World innocence against Old World disenchantment, as Henry James would put it.

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