‘Nora’s Will’
A pleasing, elegant murmur of a comic anecdote, written and directed by fledgling filmmaker Mariana Chenillo, “Nora’s Will” takes its cue from the understated authority of Fernando Lujan’s central performance, reason enough to see the movie. A superb minimalist, he plays Jose, who lives alone in a Mexico City apartment across the courtyard from his ex-wife Nora. The fastidious opening scene, wordless, presents Nora preparing a Passover Seder table. Then she kills herself. It is her first successful attempt out of 15 tries.
Where does the story go from such an opening? Chenillo, it turns out, has a gently assured hand in sustaining “Nora’s Will.” True to her control-freakish nature Nora has made obsessively careful arrangements for her exit. Swallowing a fatal dose of sleeping pills on the eve of Passover means the body cannot be planted in a Jewish cemetery for four days. As grown son Ruben (Ari Brickman) and family make their way back home, and the body remains on ice in the apartment, atheist Jose is beset by advising rabbis and memories of better days. At one point Jose opts for a quickie Catholic burial simply to be done with it. But a telltale photograph underneath Nora’s bed turns up evidence that his marriage held secrets.
The way characters come and go, “Nora’s Will” has the air of a well-constructed stage play. The way it’s acted, the comedy is kept on an artful simmer. In the end, Nora gets her Passover dinner prepared the way she wanted it. The audience gets a modest but skillful first-time feature, a huge hit in Mexico, from a very promising writer-director.
No MPAA rating (some language). At the Music Box Theatre, 3733 N. Southport Ave.; musicboxtheatre.com. In Spanish with English subtitles. Running time: 1:32.
‘Strongman’
The beefy, steel-bending subject of Zachary Levy’s engaging documentary is Stanley “Stanless Steel” Pleskun, a New Jersey scrap metal dealer whose other career involves leg-pressing dump trucks, twisting pennies with his fingers and manhandling a horseshoe any way he likes. Levy followed Stanless around for years, as his relationship with his girlfriend and reluctant partner in show business went through thick and thin (or, as Mel Brooks used to say, “thin”). A wide array of low-level strongman gigs forms the through-line to the film, including an appearance on a London TV series called “Don’t Try This At Home!” and, an inch away from Christopher Guest “mockumentary” territory, a children’s birthday party closer to home.
“Who’s better than me with bending steel?” the pig-tailed, hard-drinking Pleskun asks, rhetorically. His T-shirt advertises Stanless as possessing POWER BEYOND WHAT IS NORMAL. Levy’s film often has the air of a conventional reality show, but it’s pretty rich. As Stanless confronts the limits of his personal relationships, he speaks the truest line uttered in “Strongman”: “You can bend bars and break chains. But you can’t bend people.”
No MPAA rating (language). Plays Fri.-Thu. at Facets Cinematheque, 1517 W. Fullerton Ave.; facets.org (Levy will be in for some screenings; see Facets site for info). Running time: 1:53.
