PARK CITY, Utah – With temperatures pushing a positively spring-like 50 degrees, love in all its many permutations is in the air at this year’s Sundance Film Festival.
One of the strongest lineups in years includes dramedies like “Adventureland” and “500 Nights of Summer,” as well as edgier smaller films like “Dare,” in which male and female best pals compete for a sexually confused male classmate.
But the most talked-about film here is the envelope-pushing “Push: Based on a Novel by Sapphire,” which boldly explores the theme of self-love in ways that drew tears and standing ovations from audiences.
Roughly a Harlem version of “The Color Purple” minus Steven Spielberg’s schmaltz, this remarkable movie centers on an overweight black teenager who triumphs over punishing adversity.
Unforgettably played by newcomer Gabourey Sidibe, Precious Jones is a 16-year-old pregnant with her second child by her father. She’s illiterate and lives with her abusive, welfare-collecting mother (the comedian Mo’nique, who is already being talked up for an Oscar nomination).
Precious does have a gift for math and finds a lifeline in an alternative high school program where she learns self-esteem from a lesbian teacher (Paula Patton) and a sympathetic but tough social worker who is very well played by – of all people – Mariah Carey.
The film’s unsparing depiction of urban despair is leavened with doses of magic realism.
Director Lee Daniels says Tom Cruise turns up in the original 1996 novel by Sapphire, a poet and songwriter who works with at-risk teenagers – but in his movie this role is filled by musician Lenny Kravitz.
“Push” (the full title distinguishes it from another upcoming movie of the same name starring Dakota Fanning) is considered a strong contender to win Sundance’s dramatic competition tomorrow.
Another audience favorite in the competition lineup is the Spanish-
language “Sin Nombre.”
Cary Joji Fukunaga of Brooklyn Heights makes an arresting directorial debut with this character-driven thriller about a young woman hoping to illegally enter the US by traveling with dozens of others atop a train from her native Honduras.
Along the way, she meets up with – and falls in love with – a young Mexican who is trying to avoid being killed by members of his former gang. Focus features will release “Sin Nombre” in March.
A more whimsical romantic entry in the competition is “Paper Heart,” a sometimes charming, sometimes arch mock documentary that puts a fictional gloss on the real-life relationship between stand-up comedian Charlyne Yi and “Juno” star Michael Cera.
And then there’s “Brief Interviews With Hideous Men,” with John Krasinski of “The Office” making his filmmaking debut with the first screen adaptation of the novel by the late David Foster Wallace.
Julianne Nicholson plays a researcher who surveys the behavior of post-feminist men acting badly in this well-acted if occasionally pretentious flick.
In Sundance’s slimmed-down program of premieres this year, the clear audience favorite is “500 Days of Summer,” the assured feature debut of music video director Mark Webb, who employs everything from animation to a dance sequence.
Indie stalwarts Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Zooey Deschanel give charming breakthrough performances in this nonlinear tale of two San Franciscans (her name is Summer) whose feelings for each other are never quite in sync. Fox Searchlight will release it in July.
Another big crowd-pleaser is the “Adventureland” from “Superbad” director Greg Mottola, which Miramax will put out in March.
Red-hot “Twilight” star Kristen Stewart and Jesse Eisenberg (“The Squid and the Whale”) play college grads who explore their feelings for each other while working at a Pittsburgh amusement park during the summer of 1987.
Like last fall’s very similar “Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist,” it aims, with modest success, to be a “Dazed and Confused” for contemporary teenagers.
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