Life on the Edge

The UCLA Film Archive’s “Contemporary Latin Cinema” offers some refreshingly venturesome films, starting with its opener--Martin Rejtman’s “Silvia Prieto,” screening tonight at 7:30 at the James Bridges Theater in Melnitz Hall. With his acute powers of observation and deadpan sense of humor, Rejtman rivets attention on the banal existence of heroine Silvia (Rosario Blefari) and her friends (and their friends).

Silvia, who’s turning 27, is ordinary in appearance and in her life. Her routine existence of menial jobs is broken by the discovery that in all of Buenos Aires there is, in fact, another Silvia Prieto. The cost of her aimless existence is a frightening lack of identity, emblematic of her drifting generation. Rejtman throughout reveals a mastery of his minimalist style.

“Divine” (Saturday at 7:30 p.m.) represents Mexico’s veteran Arturo Ripstein, spiritual heir--and onetime assistant--to Luis Bun~uel, at his most confidently outrageous. A crumbling mission has become home to a sect led by the prophet Mother Dorita and her lover, a defrocked Spanish priest, Father Basilio, who believe that we can learn everything from biblical movies.

The setting is one of tattered dime-store splendor, and Dorita and Basilio are played by icons of the Spanish-language cinema, Katy Jurado and Francisco Rabal, powerful actors who, with advancing age, have not exactly fought back at the ravages of time. At first it looks like Ripstein is heading for satire, but actually Dorita and Basilio are touching in their enduring love for each other.

There is a surprising innocence in the sect that is threatened when the dying Dorita chooses as her successor a prostitute’s young daughter Tomasa (Edwarda Gurrola) who sees her role as to be both Madonna and whore. This exuberant yet oddly poignant mix of sex and religion, ignorance and intuition, gives way to a consideration of the power struggle between church, state and media in the governing of our lives. (310) 206-8588.

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The American Cinematheque continues its “Belles Du Jour: French Actresses--The New Generation” on a strong note with a revival screening of “Mina Tannenbaum” (1994), with its stars Romane Bohringer and Elsa Zylberstein present. For much of her film, writer-director Martine Dugowson makes you wonder why she didn’t call her film “Mina and Ethel,” since it’s the story of two women, both born in 1958, who meet at age 7. On screen, Mina (Bohringer) and Ethel (Zylberstein) are of equal importance. But by the time the film is over you understand only too well why it bears the title it does. Dugowson, a cinematographer in her smashing feature-directing debut, leaves us with a heightened awareness that the most important of friendships can be fragile and possess limits, and that friendship, like life itself, is invariably provisional. This is a real depth-charge of a movie, one that you can’t--and shouldn’t--easily shake off.

Friday brings an outstanding double feature, Jacques Doillon’s 1989 “The 15-Year-Old Girl” (at 7 p.m.) and Christian Vincent’s “What’s So Funny About Me?” (at 9:30 p.m.). In the title role Judith Godreche is a beauty discovering her allure, as she comes up with the cockamamie idea--or is it, this being so French a film?--that she should seduce the father (Doillon) of her gawky 14-year-old boyfriend (Melvil Poupaud). She believes this will cancel out her attraction-repulsion feelings toward the father and solidify her relationship with his son. Set at an isolated seaside retreat, the film is more engaging and persuasive than it sounds, and Godreche, now a major actress, glows.

The second film is a wry, contemplative delight as a well-known stand-up comic (TV star Jackie Berroyer) is persuaded to return for honors in the northern French former mining town where he lived with his grandparents between the ages of 7 and 14--and where he worked in the mines. Middle-aged, balding and unhandsome, Berroyer’s Pierre musters considerable charm in response to his growing attraction to his radiant hostess (Karin Viard), who has problems like you wouldn’t believe. You can understand why rueful everyman Berroyer is such a star on the tube.

Krysztof Kieslowski’s celebrated “Trois Couleurs” will screen in its entirety Saturday starting at 6 p.m. with “Blue” and resuming after a dinner break at 9 p.m. with “White” and “Red.” Julie Delpy, star of “White,” will appear in person. (323) 466-FILM.

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An impressive group of shorts is one of the highlights of the first Hollywood Black Film Festival, which will be held at USC, Friday through Sunday, and at the nearby Flagship Theaters, 3323 S. Hoover St. (at the corner of Jefferson Boulevard). Composed of awards programs and seminars along with 26 screenings, the festival is receiving wide support from industry and media organizations. Esteemed filmmaker Charles Burnett will present Friday at 11:30 a.m. in Norris Theater his 13-minute “Dr. Endesha Ida Mae Holland,” a portrait of the remarkable writer whose acclaimed autobiographical play “From the Mississippi Delta” tells of her overcoming poverty, rape in childhood and prostitution, by involvement in the civil rights movement. Now a USC professor in theater and gender studies, Holland has not allowed the effects of congenital ataxia, a crippling neurological disorder, to quench her indomitable, vibrant spirit. “What insights have I gained in being me?” she asks herself, replying, “How to be patient.”

Burnett’s film screens again on Saturday at the Flagship Theaters at 10:30 a.m. as part of a program of shorts that includes Cinque Northern’s “The Apartment,” a deft and amusing evocation of that moment when a couple are confronted with the reality of moving in together. Also imaginative are Jim Fleigner’s “From the Top of the Key,” in which a bright young boy (well-played by Gabriel Woods) finds himself resisting the pressure to take the opportunity to attend a prep school certain to land him a college scholarship. Fleigner confronts us deftly with our capacity for stereotyping by subtly encouraging us to assume the boy’s special gift is in athletics.

Filmmaker Gregory N. Earls is offering only tantalizing glimpses of his “Sax’s Final Orbit,” a love story that centers, in part, on its protagonist’s attempt to elevate flat-landing--which involves performing acrobatic movements on a BMX bike--into an art form. The clips look promising. (310) 348-3942.

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The Long Beach Gay & Lesbian Film Festival will present P.J. Castellaneta’s lively “Relax . . . It’s Just Sex” Sunday at 4 p.m. at the Carpenter Performing Arts Center at Cal State Long Beach, 6200 Atherton St. This crowd-pleaser, which opened Outfest ‘98, is a lot like other modestly budgeted L.A. thirtysomething movies in which most everyone lives in old Spanish flats or houses with trendy decor. It’s talky with humor that comes from TV sitcoms rather than life, yet Castellaneta digs deeper and ranges further than many of his contemporaries. He’s also got an established actress in the versatile Jennifer Tilly to anchor his film. Tilly plays a witty and amusing woman with a desire for children, a live-in boyfriend not quite ready to settle down and a need to play den mother to her gay and lesbian friends who, like her, are beset by romantic problems. The film’s key accomplishment is to present a network of friendships spanning sexual orientation and various races and ethnicities as well. (562) 434-4455.

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Notes: Independent Feature Project / West and the Writers Guild are launching their “New Vision” series of bimonthly screenings tonight at 7:30 at the Writers Guild Theater, 135 S. Doheny Drive, Beverly Hills. The film will be “Eight Lanes in Hamilton,” a story of manipulation and intrigue, directed by Aslam Amlani from Ken O’Donnell’s script. (310) 475-4379.

Filmforum is presenting a series of films by renowned photographer and filmmaker Robert Frank, starting tonight with a reedited and rethought version of his first documentary, “Me and My Brother,” which casts documentary footage on Allen Ginsburg, Peter Orlovsky and Orlovsky’s brother Julius within a fictional framework. It screens at 8 p.m. at the Art Center College of Design, 1700 Lido St., Pasadena. (626) 396-2246.