Percival’s Big Night

Recapping Cinequest 22

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San Jose’s Cinequest 22 film festival has ended.  For me, Cinequest 22 meant seeing 17 features, a short and several interviews and Q&As with filmmakers – all including several world and US premieres.  I saw my share of American films, but I also saw movies from China, Spain, Belgium, the Slovak Republic, Argentina, Hungary, Russia, Sweden and Norway.

Among the festival crowd, movies about overcoming disability and disease seemed to be the most popular.  I generally preferred the comedies and romances that prove that it is still possible to write a good movie in those genres.

I especially liked two of the biggest movies in the festival:  the zany Chinese action film Let the Bullets Fly and the drama about the American education system Detachment (I’ll be commenting on Detachment on Wednesday before its release this weekend).

There were some smaller films that I hope gain distribution:  King Curling, the Norwegian comedy about a curling star who must go off his psych meds to win the big match; the Argentine modern-day spaghetti western Salt; and the hipster screwball comedy Percival’s Big Night.  If given the chance to see these films, American audiences will love them.

Here’s the trailer for King Curling.

 

 

 

Cinequest – Percival’s Big Night: screwball comedy for hipsters

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Imagine if Howard Hawks were making a screwball comedy today –  a guy and a girl spar with snappy patter, survive the crazed antics of their goofy friends and fall in love.   If he set the movie in the shambles of a hipster pot dealer’s NYC apartment, you’d have Percival’s Big Night, one of the gems of Cinequest 22.

You’ll recognize the set-up:  Two 24-year-old underachievers have so far made the least of their BFAs.  Percy is infatuated with Chloe, and needs his roommate Sal to introduce her to him.  Chloe arrives with her friend Riku, who is appropriately crazy enough to match up with Sal.   The guys and girls bicker and banter, eavesdrop on each other and pair into couples.

What’s so refreshingly welcome about Percival’s Big Night is how well all of this is executed, due to the frantically paced dialogue from writer-director Jarret Kerr, who also stars as Sal.  It’s briskly paced by director Will Sullivan and very, very funny.

The cast has performed Percival’s Big Night as an off-Broadway play.  They were able to shoot the movie in six 15-minute captures that are blended together to look like one shot.  Because of the madcap pace, the audience isn’t distracted by the single shot; instead, the technique intensifies the story compressed into the small apartment.

Percival’s Big Night is enough of crowd-pleaser to deserve theatrical release; in any case, hopefully, it will be available soon on cable TV, DVD, streaming or some other outlet.