Oakton Community College (1600 E. Golf Rd., Des Plaines) — Tuesday-Friday, November 27-30 (Free Admission)
Michael Glover Smith’s RENDEZVOUS IN CHICAGO (New American)
Thursday, 2pm
At a time when our leaders prey on, and feed off, the worst parts of ourselves, it couldn’t be a more necessary time for an homage to Éric Rohmer. That’s just what my friend, Cine-File‘s own Mike Smith, has given us with his third feature, the sweet, delightful, humanistic rom-com RENDEZVOUS IN CHICAGO. It celebrates love and intelligence—that is to say, the best in us. Smith has taken the basic form of Rohmer’s RENDEZVOUS IN PARIS—three sketches united by their setting in one of the world’s great cities—and added his own original agenda, which encompasses feminism and a pro-gay vision. He’s even shot the movie in Rohmer’s favored boxy Academy aspect ratio. Smith’s script, based on stories he dreamed up with Jill McKeown (his wife and also a friend), shows his knack for the simple yet elegant structure: the three chapters correspond to the beginning, middle, and end of love, respectively, with the end cycling back into the beginning. Coming out of acting retirement after 37 years, Haydée Politoff, from Rohmer’s touchstone LA COLLECTIONNEUSE (1967), performs a place-setting Hyde Park prologue. She’s the faculty adviser to U of C doctoral candidate Delaney, wittily played by Clare Cooney. The first vignette, The Brothers Karamazov, takes place in a little candlelit wine bar. If I say it’s a bit of a Kubrickian/Lynchian antechamber, that belies how cozy it actually is. It’s a lonely Sunday night and whip-smart Delaney is working on her thesis. Suddenly, she finds herself being hit on, not entirely unwelcomed, by the only other patron: none other than Paul, the likably pretentious aspiring writer from COOL APOCALYPSE, Smith’s debut. (Amusingly, when we get a glimpse of what Paul’s writing, it’s the end of MERCURY IN RETROGRADE, Smith’s second feature.) Once again, Paul is played by the funny Kevin Wehby, who’s emerging as Smith’s Jean-Pierre Léaud, or Kyle MacLachlan. Delaney proposes a naughty little game, which quickly hoists Paul with his own male petard. The second sketch, Cats and Dogs, is my favorite. Achieving an effortless Linklater-ian tone, it follows a gay couple, Andy and Rob, as they walk from their Rogers Park home to the shores of Lake Michigan. Smith sets the scene with glimpses of the Essanay and Selig Polyscope buildings, nods to Chicago’s rich film history, a subject on which he literally wrote the book. We know, but Andy doesn’t, that Rob has a question to pop, but look out—as they meet the neighborhood’s dogs, it emerges that Andy’s more of a cat person, whereas Rob’s a dog guy! As Andy and Rob, respectively, Rashaad Hall and Matthew Sherbach are so natural, charming, and funny that I not only wanted them to be a real couple, I wanted to be their friend. They run into Tess from COOL APOCALYPSE (Chelsea David), who’s out walking Sophie the Shih Tzu, playing herself in a flawless method performance. When the gents get to the beach, there’s a moving homage to the immortal “Lake Shore Drive” by the late Skip Haynes, to whom the film is dedicated. The third sketch, The End Is the Beginning, is the most minimalist. It features Nina Ganet, back as Julie from COOL APOCALYPSE. After a sudden, tumultuous rom-com breakup with Wyatt from MERCURY IN RETROGRADE (Shane Simmons), Julie finds herself alone again, but for us. Warming to us, she begins to fall in love with the camera itself: that is to say, with you and me. Since she’s played by the sunny, freckle-faced Ganet, how can we resist falling in love back, at least a little? It’s a remarkably benign, even celebratory, view of “the gaze.” As Julie takes us in her arms to dance, we spin round and round, dizzy on the cusp of new love. As an Ohio boy who’s lived in Chicago for 25 years now, I love the idea of doing for my adopted city what Rohmer did for Paris. My personal feeling is that the magic is always there in Chicago: you just need to know how to look. Perhaps the most valuable thing RENDEZVOUS IN CHICAGO did for me is to renew that feeling, after all these years. It’s a vision to treasure: heaven might just be a beach on the shores of Lake Michigan, lolling away the afternoon with someone you love, in Chicago, Illinois. Smith, producer Layne Marie Williams, and select cast in person (moderated by Cine-File Associate Editor Kathleen Sachs). (2018, 69 min, Digital Projection) SP
White City Cinema 