The first weekend of the Williamstown Film Festival will feature two powerful dramas.
Opening WFF's 11th season on Friday, October 23rd at Images Cinema is the Berkshire premiere of Handsome Harry.
Directed by Bette Gordon, who will be at the screening and take questions after, the film features an extraordinary cast: Jamey Sheridan, Steve Buscemi, Aidan Quinn, John Savage, and WFF alumnus Campbell Scott.
Harry Sweeney (Sheridan) gets a call from a former Navy buddy of 30 years before who wants Harry to seek forgiveness on his behalf from a comrade they betrayed long ago. As memory exerts its hold, Harry drives down the East Coast to look up his old friends. As he confronts the three other men complicit in a long-ago crime, two mysteries gradually unfold - what really happened on that night three decades ago, and how that event has shaped Harry's life ever since. Only by facing the distant past - and the man he betrayed - can Harry begin to truly live again.
Handsome Harry is an intense character study and psychological mystery about love, forgiveness, and how hard it is to shatter a longtime code of silence. In the words of director Bette Gordon: "Handsome Harry allowed me to explore male sexuality through a female lens. The past is powerful and continues to haunt us even when we do our best to escape it."
Tickets for Handsome Harry are $18 (students $10).
The next night - Saturday, October 24th at MASS MoCA - will see the New England premiere of Against the Current, directed by Peter Callahan from his own screenplay which was read in a joint WFF/WTF event five years ago.
Paul (Joseph Fiennes of Shakespeare in Love) calls on his old friendJeff (Justin Kirk) and a schoolteacher looking for excitement (Elizabeth Reaser) to join him as he carries out a dream of swimming the Hudson River from Troy to New York harbor. Rain or shine, Paul keeps a tight schedule, swimming while his friends ride alongside in an old motorboat. He's adamant that they reach New York by August 28. But the journey takes a troubling turn when Paul reveals that there's more to the trip than Jeff and Liz had thought.
With each day a gallows humor settles over the three as they find themselves arguing the finer points of jelly doughnuts, sex, and death. An overnight stay with Liz's mother (Mary Tyler Moore) and cousin (Michelle Trachtenberg) only complicates things. While the jokes and one-liners mix with deeper exchanges, the journey becomes a fight not only to save a friend but to discover what they seek inside themselves. Against the Current is an unforgettable saga of human folly and the many tests of friendship.
As the film makes clear, the river is as much a character as the three leads - beautiful yet unpredictable, even frightening. Callahan recalls the shoot being very difficult: "The Hudson with its tricky currents has a mind of its own and so do boats - you can imagine trying to coordinate those two elements; never mind the actors and equipment on top of that." The director will attend and do a Q-&-A after the screening.
Tickets for Against the Current are $13 adults (students $7), and are available at www.williamstownfilmfest.com or (413) 458-9900. Since this is a joint WFF/MASS MoCA event, tickets may also be purchased at www.massmoca.org or at (413) 662-2111.
The complete WFF schedule is posted on the website.