ANDRE IS AN IDIOT (B+) - Andre Ricciardi is a loquacious bon vivant who waited too long to get a preventative colonoscopy. When he was diagnosed with Stage 4 cancer in his early 50s, he decided to proudly and defiantly chronicle his final days, in this sharp and surprisingly upbeat documentary from newcomer Tony Benna.
They jump out of the gate with Andre talking into the camera about a masturbation mishap from his youth, and the honesty and raunch do not let up the rest of the way. Andre walks us through his diagnosis and treatment, and we join him on a journey of the acceptance of death. He comes across as unusually chipper, though he does not seem to be in denial. He and his best bud Lee (above right) subscribe to the theory of comedy which holds that nothing is sacred or off-limits when it comes to joking around.
Andre's wife -- they married as a green-card convenience for her and then fell in love -- and his two daughters help build a complex profile of a glib man who lent his talents to the advertising game and wasted too much of his down time indulging in alcohol and drugs. (Andre kind of looks and acts like the actor/skateboarder Jason Lee and sounds like Steve Carrel; his wife comes off as a soccer-mom version of Lisa Kudrow.) Andre's dad didn't want to participate, so he brings in Tommy Chong as a substitute to take bong rips with.
Despite the dire diagnosis, the chemotherapy does a good job keeping him alive and relatively functional. He is surprisingly spry throughout, and you don't get the sense that he is just keeping a stiff upper lip for the camera. He is irreverent and refreshingly candid about the battering his body takes. (He relishes the idea at first of losing weight.) He takes us on his spiritual search, aided by an insightful therapist, rabidly curious about some sort of meaning of life before his time runs out.
Andre is a unique individual, an outsized personality and a worthy random subject for a film treatment. It's hard not to fall for this rascal or to laugh and cry with him all the way to the grave.
MISTRESS DISPELLER (C) - Call me a skeptical grump, but I just did not buy the claim that this documentary, about a woman for hire in China who breaks up marital affairs, is on the level throughout. It is a slick, mannered portrait of a struggling couple trying to get through the husband's infidelity.
A disclaimer at the start of the film calls this a "real" case and says that nothing was "scripted" or "re-enacted." It says nothing about coached or manipulated. Or maybe the subtitles fluffed the dialogue? (IMDb reports that the production crew followed multiple couples over three years until they found one that stuck it out till the end and gave consent.) Either way, the film blends scenes with the production value of soap operas with glum, moody interludes heavy with artsy establishing shots.
The various configurations of interactions here -- husband and wife (a Mr. and Mrs. Li); wife and mistress dispeller (a friend of the wife's cousin); mistress dispeller and Fei Fei (the other, younger woman), etc. -- play out in formal set pieces, with flawless dialogue and a striking lack of emotion. (A "Real Housewives" episode this is not.) I don't think this is merely some cultural quirk, where Chinese people are so cold, stiff, formal and forgiving. The pristine dialogue just beggars belief at times. Philosophizing about the mistress dispeller, the young mistress intones: "Her influence is like a gentle drizzle, soft and soundless." What non-actor speaks like that for the camera, let alone some random delivery woman?
The main sin here, though, is that the members of the love triangle are so listless and uninteresting. There doesn't seem to be much at stake. This feels like a dedicated experiment in filmmaking by Elizabeth Lo, whose other feature follows stray dogs in Istanbul. (Lo also takes a writing credit here (curious), sharing it with Charlotte Munch Bengsten, an editor by trade.) I admire her perseverance, but maybe she should have realized at some point that her idea wasn't panning out like it ought to have.
Meanwhile, the story drags on slowly, even though it runs only 94 minutes. Lo's camerawork is stilted, setting up sitcom-style with a lot of scenes taking place at a table during meals. The principals seem pushed into awkward conversations, none of which reveal much about them as people. The mistress dispeller manipulates situations in order to carry out her mission of weaning the husband and girlfriend off of each other. That's understandable. What I don't get is how this gets passed off as authentic when it is oddly sterile and just not entirely believable.
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