The 45th Chicago International Film Festival continues through Thursday, October 22, at River East 21, 322 E. Illinois. Unless otherwise noted, tickets are $12 ($9 for students, seniors, or Cinema/Chicago members), and $5 for matinees Monday through Friday (before 5:05 PM). Passes are $110 (10 admissions) and $210 (20 admissions). Tickets can be purchased at Cinema/Chicago, 30 E. Adams, suite 800, Monday through Friday from 10 AM to 6 PM; at River East 21 from noon until the last screening has begun; or from Ticketmaster (312-902-1500 or ticketmaster.com) 48 hours in advance.
Effi Briest Julia Jentsch (Sophie Scholl: The Final Days) plays the title character in this fifth screen adaptation of the German novel by Theodor Fontane. After marrying an aristocrat in his 30s (Sebastian Koch of The Lives of Others), teenaged Effi leaves the comfort of her family’s Prussian estate for a gloomy manor in a provincial backwater on the Baltic coast. Bored and lonely, she imagines ghosts, but a more corporeal threat exists in the jealous housekeeper (Barbara Auer). In the novel, Effi’s attachment to a callow army officer leads to her demise; by contrast, director Hermine Huntgeburth uses it to add a feminist gloss to a handsome but inconsequential fin de siecle drama. In German with subtitles. 113 min. —Andrea Gronvall Sat 10/17, 12:30 PM; Mon 10/19, 5 PM; and Tue 10/20, 8:30 PM.
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
Eyes Wide Open Like The Secrets, another in the spate of recent Israeli films about strictly observant Jews, this melancholy drama explores the near impossibility of reconciling religious community life and same-sex love. An ultra-Orthodox butcher (Zohar Strauss), bereaved over the death of his father, reopens the old man’s shop in Jerusalem and charitably hires a down-at-heels yeshiva student (Ran Danker) as his assistant. Ignoring rumors about the young man’s moral iniquities, the butcher brings him home to his wife and children and into his Torah circle, and gradually the bond between the two men becomes more than spiritual. Strauss and Danker give finely calibrated performances, but this directorial debut by Haim Tabakman is unadventurous, borrowing from the gay-cinema canon but adding nothing new. In Hebrew and Yiddish with subtitles. 90 min. —Andrea Gronvall Sat 10/17, 8:30 PM; Sun 10/18, 1:30 PM; and Mon 10/19, 4:30 PM.
North by Northwest Cary Grant, a martini-sodden advertising director, awakes from a middle-class daydream into an underworld nightmare when he’s mistaken for a secret agent (1959). A great film, and certainly one of the most entertaining movies ever made, directed by Alfred Hitchcock at his peak. With Eva Marie Saint, James Mason, and Leo G. Carroll. 136 min. —Dave Kehr Sun 10/18, 5 PM. Supporting player Martin Landau is scheduled to attend the screening; tickets are $12. Screening by digital projection.
ALSO PLAYING
Daniel & Ana In Mexico City, an upper-class college student (Marimar Vega) and her younger brother (Dario Yazbek Bernal) are carjacked at gunpoint, ordered into the trunk of their vehicle, taken to a deserted house, and forced to copulate on camera for a sex video. Released to safety but unwilling to tell anyone what’s happened, they try without success to return to their normal lives. The premise for this drama sounds like something from a howling telenovela, but under writer-director Michel Franco it transpires in a near hush of fear and shame, broken on occasion by austere passages from Mendelssohn. Opening credits inform us that this is based on a true story and only the names have been changed, but the film’s dignity and restraint create such a powerful emotional reality that end credits reiterating the story’s origins come as something of a shock. In Spanish with subtitles. 89 min. –J.R. Jones Sat 10/17, 5:30 PM, and Mon 10/19, 3:30 PM.
