$12 General Admission, $9 Member, $7 child age 14 or younger
Doors Open for admissions 30 min. prior to screening Buy tickets at Film Center or online now
An all-ages dance party through the kitchens, backyards and living rooms of Buenos Aires, Mariano Cohn and Gaston Duprat‘s Living Stars sets its camera on dozens of everyday Portenos and lets each do his or her thing for the duration of a single dance track.
The setup is straightforward: Fixed camera, mic on the floor to catch ambient footfalls and onscreen titles announcing each dancer’s name, profession and neighborhood. One song segues into another without host or explanatory text.
Ensuring that viewers are onboard from the start, the filmmakers lead with their best shot: a middle-aged dentist, eyes wide with excitement, having a one-man party to Lionel Richie‘s “All Night Long.” He’s mind-blowingly great — so much so that the directors bring him in for cameos in two later chapters, one of which finds him upstaging a young actress who looks unaccustomed to having an older man divert attention away from her.
That is one of the happy facts of this film: Though plenty of participants are great-looking youngsters dressed to impress, they’re often not the ones who captivate us the most. The portly, bedazzled housewife dancing to C+C Music Factory got applause where the lithe, blonde teen did not. Similarly, those with the most polished moves sometimes pale in comparison to a tween who just lets ‘er rip or the cool-looking dude (the only guest to bring his own DJ!) whose footwork occasionally runs out of steam, inspiring a momentary flash of helplessness on camera.
Mise-en-scene adds immeasurably to these encounters. Not only are we seeing people in private places with sometimes strange assortments of possessions placed just-so — like the audience of stuffed animals watching one performance, or the sculpture in a corner of a pharaoh making out with his queen. We’re also treated to deliberately nonchalant bystanders: bored brothers and sisters text on the couch while teenagers preen; Mom dyes Grandma’s hair in the kitchen while an elementary school kid in a tutu incorporates a toddler into her routine. But then a mother watches apprehensively as her daughter moves seductively to “Hit Me Baby, One More Time” and unexpectedly hops up to join in — and soon shimmies her child off onto the sidelines. Dogs with excellent senses of comic timing make crowd-pleasing appearances.
“Every Sundance there’s a crowd-pleaser, and most years it’s got one degree of separation from the Little Miss Sunshine crew. But the most delightful flick of the 2014 fest is an unconventional documentary with no plot, no dialogue, and nothing but party.”
–LA Weekly
“Certainly the most unique movie screening in Hot Docs this year, Gaston Duprat and Marinano Cohn’s Living Stars takes all of five seconds to describe, but can’t really be comprehended until you see it for yourself.”
–Point of View Magazine
