Seed Newsvine"The Moon Inside You" (Spain/Slovakia)/"Nang Mai" (Thailand)
I don't know about you but I have horrid memories from my childhood concerning my trips to the local Osco Drug to buy my mother her "Super/Heavy/Overnight" maxi pads since she couldn't go her herself because she would be dying with cramps back at home.
Watching Diana Fabianova's documentary "The Moon Inside Of You" I sat up in my seat during the amusing intro, showing Ms. Fabianova approach various men on the streets asking them their thoughts on "menstruation." Some of the looks they give at first are priceless and raise the curtain on the taboo topic of periods with all the negative connotations that come with it. Yet by the end, what "Moon Inside" matures into is less of a documentary resting on the social awkwardness of periods--and the fear of excessive amounts of blood--and more into an [accidental?] essay on the importance of womanhood and the call to arms for women to unite in their extraordinary power: to create life.
Now if I have made the documentary sound like the best documentary of the year, it's not. This is a notable debut for first time filmmaker Diana Fabianova, and according to her (she attended the same screening) it took 4 years to see the film through completion. However the doc does fall victim to some flat gags, like the overuse of the color red as a motif in everyday life, a running subplot involving a video diary of an eleven year old on the eve of her first period (which doesn't have the emotional payoff we were hoping for) and the indifference to narrative tone (sections of the film have Ms. Fabianova as a significant & comic onscreen character, while other stretches have the camera as a directionless viewer).
But we do run into some eye opening characters, most memorably a Brazilian doctor who can guarantee to rid women of periods for the rest of their lives. His zeal for the female anatomy is a real hoot. Other experts in the field work as a catalyst for the film's most potent theme: rendering the menstrual cycle as an empowering tool for women, rather than a monthly inconvenience. One individual/talking head draws the powerful image of the period representing a new birth for the woman; every month, a woman makes a powerful choice whether to go ahead and use that fertile egg to give life to another human being (thus giving birth to her life as a mother) or to pass on it and give herself a new life again (if even only for the next month) as a free human being. It's quite the provocative conclusion.
Note: This documentary was pitched for American television but was turned down due to the very nature of its content. It can still be purchased on DVD via the Internet.
Which is why so far, with this film festival, "Nymph" is my biggest disappointment. I almost wish the film had ended right after this opening. It's so great. The rest of this festival entry from Thailand--which by the way claims to be based on a short story by Edgar Allan Poe & I have no idea which story--generally assumes you will give it the same sort of awe-inspiring reaction that its opening sequence earned. The problem is, a dreamlike sequence is easier to enjoy than the tribulations between a married couple on the ropes. The pair, who haven't had sex in months, go on a vacation into said woods. Dark lighting and vague editing transitions later and the hubby goes missing. Light on dialogue but way too heavy on atmosphere, "Nymph" sort of develops into a possible ghost story via a mild third act plot development but it's such a drag until then that I felt like re-watching the way over-the-top, pretty much dumb but devilishly entertaining "Zombieland" instead. Sometimes spectacle (zombies) can be more enduring than sophisticated silence (camping in the woods). (Sometimes.)
