Mona Lisa Is Missing- interview with documentary maker Joe Medeiros (KPBS)

This is a fun little documentary about THE art theft of the first half of the 20th century.
Here is the interview with the director:

A Comedy Writer Follows The Trail Of One Of The Greatest Art Thefts In History

Speaking With Joe Medeiros, Director Of “Mona Lisa Is Missing”

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Credit: courtesy Joe Medeiros

Above: Joe Medeiros, director of the documentary, "Mona Lisa Is Missing," will in person at the screenings

Thursday, December 11, 2014

By Rebecca Romani

SAN DIEGO — You could say Joe Medeiros has a long attention span. You could even call him, well, obsessed.
“But in a good way,” Medeiros said.
Medeiros is screening the fruit of his obsession, the fun and informative documentary, “Mona Lisa Is Missing,” Thursday night at La Paloma Theatre in Encinitas as part of the San Diego Italian Film Festival’s monthly screening series.
RELATED: Review Of ‘Mona Lisa Is Missing’
“It’s perfect timing,” Medeiros said of the screening. “It’s 101 years to the day that Vincenzo Peruggia brought the Mona Lisa to Florence.”
Just how and why Vincenzo Peruggia came by the celebrated painting in the first place has occupied Medeiros for more than 30 years. At first a fascinating tale, the story of the theft, the thief, and the thrill of the scandal soon turned into an obsession for Medeiros. Originally, he thought it would make a great feature film script.
“But maybe I’m not much of a fiction writer,” Medeiros joked.
Medeiros, who has worked as a writer/producer for Jay Leno, let the idea percolate for awhile until, “one day I was looking up Peruggia to see if there was anything new and I discovered Celestina (Peruggia’s daughter)."
Medeiros said as soon as he started thinking of the project as a documentary and not a fiction piece, things fell quickly into place.
“Serendipity?” he said.
Peruggia’s daughter, by then 84, was willing to talk about her father. Other interesting bits fell into place as Medeiros worked on the documentary. For example, access to the apartment where Peruggia lived in Paris, and permission to shoot in the Louvre when it was closed.
For Medeiros, as well as the family, pursuing the documentary was a type of closure. A long standing mystery about why would an Italian immigrant laborer, Vincenzo Perrugia, steal one of the most important paintings in the world was finally being investigated and told.
The documentary, “Mona Lisa Is Missing,” has what Medeiros calls a through line- a narrative that keeps the story on track. Part of the film involves Medeiros’ search for material and his interactions with Celestina Perrugia and her family.
“It’s basically a quest to find the truth,” Medeiros said, a way of working with his interest in Perrugia, the crime and its aftermath.
As with many historical documentaries, Medeiros had to solve the problem of making the material interesting and creating material where there was none. Ken Burns did this for his series on the Civil War by creating what is now known as the Ken Burns effect - the zooming in, out and around pictures of the era. Medeiros takes a more eclectic tack, often inserting pieces of pictures into another picture and animating people and objects. The effect is both funny and effective. Medeiros describes his technique as “born of desperation” and as a way of dealing with little to no footage for parts of the story.
In addition, Medeiros wanted to keep the tone light and entertaining. After all, he said, “I’ve written comedy for 15 years!”
Medeiros said the Perrugia family is pleased with the final product even though it might not show Vincenzo Perruggia in the most romantic of lights. The project was both fun and the answer to a long standing mystery, why did Peruggia make off with such a famous painting? For Medeiros, Peruggia’s crime needs to be seen against the backdrop of the times.
According to Medeiros, Peruggia was an immigrant in France, and the painting was his “golden ticket to honor and financial reward.” Treated as an inferior immigrant by the French, Peruggia “believed he was better than what was happening to him.”
As the documentary points out, Peruggia was arrested in Italy when he offered the painting to a dealer in Florence, and served time in prison. The painting was returned to France where it had been legitimately acquired from Da Vinci himself.
Peruggia, Medeiros explained, actually returned to France after World War I and couldn’t resist showing his new bride the painting whose theft shocked the art world.
As for Medeiros, finding the truth turned out to be much more fun than creating the fiction.
Medeiros and the producer, his wife, Justine Mestichelli Medeiros, will be on hand for questions after the screening tonight at La Paloma Theatre in Encinitas.

http://www.kpbs.org/news/2014/dec/11/interview-joe-medeiros-director-mona-lisa-missing/

"Learning To Drive"

This review appeared on KPBS.org. "Learning to Drive" opened in San Diego September 11, 2015- a rather appropriate date, given the racism one of the characters faces, and is distributed by Broad Green Pictures.

Guest Review: ‘Learning To Drive’

Metaphors to live by

Guest blogger Rebecca Romani says that while "Learning to Drive" (opened this weekend in cinemas around San Diego) is largely predictable, it's the little moments that make a gorgeous late summer film.

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Above: (l to r) Ben Kingsley stars as Darwan and Patricia Clarkson as Wendy in "Learning to Drive."

Tuesday, September 15, 2015

By Rebecca Romani

Companion viewing

“Cairo Time” (2009)
“The House of Sand and Fog" (2003)
“Elegy "(2008) and
“The Secret Life of Words " (2005)

For Wendy Shields, fierce intellectual book critic, life has been a series of words, pages, articles, and books. She admires writers, is admired by them, lives in a lovely apartment that looks comfortably messy, has a husband, has a daughter and leads a nice, lived-in life.
And then, one night, her dust jacket of a life goes to hell in the back seat of a cab. Her husband of 21 years has just informed her he’s leaving her and instructs the cabbie to take her home.
For Wendy (elegant, always interesting Patricia Clarkson), weepy and wrung out, the cab ride is a short, wretched sob session of minor confessions and self-flagellation. Distracted, she leaves an important manuscript on the seat, much to the consternation of the driver, Darvan Singh Tur (calm, slightly rumpled Ben Kingsley), who feels compelled to return it to Wendy the next day.
It’s an odd meeting between the composed Sikh and the fraying critic who finds herself suddenly alone in Manhattan, having never learned to drive. When Wendy realizes Darvan also gives driving lessons, a tiny door of hope opens. Wendy has no idea of how to drive, and up to now has never needed to. So she turns Darvan to show her how and to take her mind off her collapsing marriage.
Darvan takes his charge seriously and gently coaxes Wendy into first gear and eventually onto the freeway (“What’s wrong?” “We’re moving!”). Eventually, they make it across the Brooklyn Bridge and survive parallel parking and a fender bender.
In the process, Darvan and Wendy come to learn about their parallel worlds - Wendy becomes aware of how post 9/11 hysteria still dogs Darvan in his turban and how Sikh tradition pairs him in an arranged marriage, while Darvan begins to see Wendy as a woman learning to negotiate a newly uncoupled life who might have some advice for him as he embarks on a new marriage.
And from here, “Learning to Drive” coasts predictably enough along as driving turns into a metaphor for life.
“Learning To Drive” telegraphs its basic moments quite clearly, nonetheless, it pulls sweet little punches in the unexpected details. Under a lesser director and with a less interesting cast, “Learning To Drive” could have easily become an older chick flick, driving cougar jokes into the ground.
Instead, under Spanish director, Isabel Coixet (“Elegy”), “Learning to Drive” has well-timed, deeper moments. Its lack of polished and perky observations come as a shock, at first. And then comes the realization that it’s a film for grown ups, grungy pajamas, elegant dinners and all. It’s fun and surprisingly earthy, whether talking about blowjobs (“Why do you think it’s called a 'job?'”) or loamy sod in Vermont.
Coixet has teamed up with her "Elegy” costars to create a gentle, lived-in film, sensitively adapted from a short story in The New Yorker by screenwriter Sarah Kernochan. The result is a masterful combination made even better by the intelligent, relaxed editing.
Patricia Clarkson gives Wendy the right amount of elegance and sense of impending collapse if she doesn’t keep it together. There is something about her Wendy that recalls an earlier character, not quite sure of her element, that of Juliette in Rubba Nada’s luscious “Cairo Time.” Here, too, Clarkson’s character is not sure how attracted she should be to her companion on her journey through another culture and place, in a comfortable, moving interaction.
Kingsley’s Darvan Singh Tur is a rumpled, disciplined contradiction. Seemingly not quite at ease in his turban, still, Darvan is deeply committed to the Sikh principles including service to others, all the while clearly affirming his American identity, even in the face of daily, low level, obnoxious racism - a subtle comment on the reality of post-9/11 racism for Sikhs and others.
Kingsley, himself of Indian descent, gives Darvan a sort of innocent gravitas, which slowly flowers into a desire for companionship. Kingsley brilliantly balances the moment Darvan hesitates between his commitment to his new wife, Jasleen, and the possibility Wendy might be the educated woman he seeks – so clear is Darvan’s hesitation, you can almost touch it. And yet Kingsley is also able to deftly draw the tenderness in the moment Darvan is able to see the possibilities of a satisfying relationship with a woman he is only beginning to get to know.
Like Clarkson, there is something that harkens back to earlier work. Here Kingsley’s Darvan has echoes of his role as the tragic Col. Behrani, a stern Iranian immigrant trying to create the American dream for his family after the fall of the Shah in “The House of Sand and Fog.” Both are committed to principle, and where Behrani is sternly unbending, Darvan is a kinder, gentler version of the immigrant who must make it because he has no choice.
Sarita Choudhury does a lovely turn as Darvan’s new wife, Jasleen, who marries a bit late in life. Usually seen as the sensual beauty in films like “ A Perfect Murder,” Choudhury is much plainer, much more the country bride here. It’s a deeply human performance as Choudhury allows Jasleen to unfold before our eyes to become a woman with goals and finally, the potential for a comfortable relationship with a man she has committed her life to sight unseen.
It’s nice to see Sikhs finally get some dignified screen time. Coixet foregoes, and perhaps wasn’t even tempted by, that tried and tired trope of the Western woman (re)discovering the non-Western man in his exoticness. Instead, Coixet treats Darvan and his fellow Sikhs not as creatures to be spied upon in their native state, but as existing independent of Wendy and, therefore, with lives to be considered in their own right. Coixet allows Darvan to explain his circumstances - an educated man in exile for political reasons, his arranged marriage; but this is also set against the context of Wendy’s crumbling marital status. There are intriguing shots of the inside of a Gurdwara or Sikh temple and moments from Darvan’s marriage ceremony. But Darvan isn't explained ad nauseam. He just is in his being and dignity, and that’s refreshing.
There comes a time, around September, when the precious love story, the precocious irony, and the pithy generalities of summer fare just seem so done. You can’t decide if you have moved beyond them or if they've held you under and drowned you with their earnestness bit to seem forever young.
In contrast, “Learning to Drive” is a great cinematic palate cleanser for the waning dog days. It may not forge completely new paths, but Coixet presents a fun film with unexpected moments of tenderness, reality and sharply observant humor - and a reminder, that “learning to see,” as Darvan explains to Wendy, may help you keep your life on the road.
"Learning to Drive" is currently playing at the Hillcrest Landmark, Reading Cinemas Town Square in Clairemont, AMC La Jolla 12, The Cinépolis Luxury Cinemas in Del Mar, and the Edwards San Marcos 18.

Welcome to Cinefille!   

For now, this will be the compilation and posting blog for my writings on film, including interviews, reviews and background writing.

Most of the currently listed work comes from KPBS.org, as part of the Cinema Junkie Blog. Early pieces come from here and there.

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Enjoy!