NY TIMES!

THE NEW YORK TIMES: MOVIES January 17th 2007


A Father and a Son Tell Their Own Tales of Love and Loss

By MATT ZOLLER SEITZ

Azazel Jacobs's unexpectedly beguiling romantic comedy,

"The GoodTimesKid," opening today at the Anthology Film

Archives, boasts a 77-minute running time that's maybe 10

percent dialogue. The remainder is spent watching alienated

characters - a young woman named Diaz; her boyfriend,

Rodolfo; and another man who's also named Rodolfo - drift

through a deadpan-surreal city while remaining lost in their

own heads.

The wisp of a plot finds the first Rodolfo (a spiritually

battered bohemian played by Mr. Jacobs) mistakenly receiving

a letter ordering him to report for military induction.

Report he does, partly to escape his sweet but suffocating

girlfriend, Diaz (the daffy knockout Sara Diaz), and partly

because he's afflicted by the same comic paralysis as the

rest of the characters and is desperate to make a big

decision (or any decision).

At the same induction, the even more existentially

shellshocked second Rodolfo (played by the actor and

filmmaker Gerardo Naranjo, who has Hector Elizondo's gentle

eyes and 1970s Warren

Beatty hair) hears his own named called, sees the

first Rodolfo stand up, keeps his trap shut, follows the

first Rodolfo home, observes his exit from the relationship

and then walks right into Diaz's life.

Diaz is O.K. with this; within minutes of meeting the

second Rodolfo, she nicknames him "Depresso" and dances in

the kitchen like a Max

Fleischer cartoon character to a vinyl recording of

"I Can't Give You Anything But Love."

Shot in ripe color on 35-millimeter film stock reportedly

stolen from a Hollywood production, and featuring a Mandy

Hoffman score that suggests Nino Rota music

performed by an orchestra that's being gradually digested by

a boa constrictor, "The GoodTimesKid" finds poetry in

wordless scenes of observation: Diaz destroying her ex's

records, pausing to glance at the liner notes; the first

Rodolfo drunk in a pub, baiting a gang of toughs while clad

in a leather helmet, boxing gloves and a cape made from an

American flag; Diaz and the second Rodolfo gazing frankly at

each other in a coffeeshop while an off-screen television

plays a soap opera.

Mr. Jacobs's approach is descended from a long line of

minimalist filmmakers, from Jac ues Tati ("Monsieur Hulot's

Holiday") up through Jim Jarmusch

("Mystery Train"), but "The GoodTimesKid" dances, like Diaz,

in its own sweet style. It doesn't get to the point because

getting there is the point.

Also having its premiere at the Anthology Film Archives

is "Two Wrenching Departures," a video version of a 1989

experimental feature by Mr. Jacobs's father, the filmmaker

Ken Jacobs.

Designed as an elegy for two of Ken Jacobs's friends, the

cameraman and co-director Bob Fleischner ("Blonde Cobra")

and the performer Jack Smith ("Flaming Creatures"), it dices

up black-and-white footage taken when the men attended night

school at the City University of New York in the late 1950s,

reprinting and repeating individual frames and breaking them

up with stretches of blackness. The resultant stutter-step

effect suggests an attempt to seize time and live forever in

the moment.

TWO WRENCHING DEPARTURES

Opens today in Manhattan.

Directed and edited by Ken Jacobs; director of

photography, Mr. Jacobs. At the Anthology Film Archives, 32

Second Avenue, at Second Street, East Village. Running time:

90 minutes. This film is not rated.

THE GOODTIMESKID

Opens today in Manhattan.

Directed and edited by Azazel Jacobs; written by Gerardo

Naranjo and Mr. Jacobs; directors of photography, Mr.

Jacobs, Eric Curtis and Mr. Naranjo; music by Mandy Hoffman;

produced by Sara Diaz, Georgina Garcia Riedel and Ernesto

Garabito. At the Anthology Film Archives, 32 Second Avenue,

at Second Street, East Village. Running time: 77 minutes.

This film is not rated.

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