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Hey y'all-- One of the BIG draw backs about being away from America is that I miss lots of films, music, art and theater that make up a big part of my life. You can't get everything you want in life *alas!* but if I was there, I would have a thrilling weekend in the dark. Never minded going to the movies by myself, but if any of you all wanna come along, you're more than welcome! I robbed these reviews from Friday's LA TIMES. There are so many good movies beging made, but they sure as hell ain't playing at Del Amo or Rolling Hills. Hope some of you can make the effort to track these down. I can't be there to see them but if anyone of you go to any of these films, write back and tell me how they are!    ROMAN DE GARE A witty yet ultimately poignant guessing game in which nobody is quite what he or she seems -- is arguably Claude Lelouch's best film. Its title translates as "airport novel," and Lelouch pays homage to the lure of those high adventures by mining one of his typically extravagant plots for both humor and pathos, raising provocative questions of identity and of the confusion of truth and fiction. After a flurry of foreshadowing moments, the film settles on an attractive but insecure Paris hairdresser (Audrey Dana), who is ditched at 3 a.m. at a gas station by the fiancé she is taking to meet her parents. Along comes a middle-aged man (Dominique Pinon), whom she persuades to pose as her fiancé to save face with her family. But who is he? He could be a runaway high school teacher with a wife and two children back in Paris. Or he could be a serial killer. The second half of the film focuses on Pinon and the timelessly elegant Fanny Ardant, never better as a bestselling novelist whose encounter with Pinon sets off a series of dizzying developments, culminating in a breathtaking turn of the tables that explodes like a string of firecrackers. The freshness and originality that flow through "Roman de Gare" now burst into full flower, revealing the director's depth and perception. "Roman de Gare." In French with English subtitles. MPAA rating: R for brief language and sexual references. Running time: 1 hour, 43 minutes. In selected theaters. WATER LILIES A tender look at coming of age Céline Sciamma's absorbing, quietly illuminating "Water Lilies" depicts a group of high school students in the throes of coming of age with seriousness and sensitivity. The skinny Marie (Pauline Acquart) and her plump best friend, Anne (Louise Blachère), are frequent spectators of the graceful performances of the synchronized swimming team, and soon Marie becomes enthralled by its captain, Floriane (Adèle Haenel), a dark blond beauty who exudes self-confidence and a limitless sense of entitlement. Floriane is an enigma in which her surprising vulnerability vies with her reflexive manipulativeness. She is pursued by François (Warren Jacquin), the handsomest member of the boys' swimming team, who is viewed with longing by Anne. The three girls are naturally experiencing the full onslaught of sexuality and emotions, and it is Sciamma's particular gift in her assured debut film that she evokes how ill-defined these feelings are. The elegant "Water Lilies" is not about answers but about discovery of self and of others in all its pain and pleasure. "Water Lilies." Unrated. Running time: 1 hour, 21 minutes. In French with English subtitles. Exclusively at the Nuart through Thursday, 11272 Santa Monica Blvd., West Los Angeles, (310) 281-8223. INDESTRUCTIBLE More video diary than polished documentary, the gripping "Indestructible" is still one of the most intimate and challenging real-life depictions you'll likely see about degenerative illness. The film also rewards in perspective-altering ways, the kind sure to make viewers grateful they can perform basic tasks like removing a T-shirt or taking a bath without the Sisyphean effort of the film's courageous writer-director, Ben Byer. Byer, who at 31 was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) -- better known as Lou Gehrig's disease -- turns the cameras on himself as he charts a three-year quest for physical and spiritual healing that took him across the U.S., to Greece, China, Jamaica, Israel and Egypt. En route, the upbeat Midwesterner, a former actor and playwright, interviews such neurologists as "Awakenings" author Oliver Sacks and YongChao Xia, creator of the intense herbal remedy BuNaoGao, along with ALS sufferers. But it's Byer's bold decision to undergo a controversial fetal-cell transplant that offers the film's most powerful moments. The commitment by an atrophying Byer and his father, Steven, to battle this "Grim Reaper of neurological disease" poignantly underscores the roulette-wheel nature of human suffering. "Indestructible." Unrated. Running time: 1 hour, 53 minutes. In English, Greek, Mandarin, Cantonese and Tibetan with English subtitles. AND THE ONE I THINK LOOKS THE MOST INTRIGUING...!  REPRISE Norwegian director Joachim Trier captures youth in all its idealistic glory. For all their emphasis on the youth market, American movies have never done a good job of portraying actual youth. The idea that young equals dumb prevails -- never mind that it's about the only time in life when reading Foucault or sitting through a Tarkovsky double feature is a viable task. What Hollywood tends to ignore is perhaps the central project of late adolescence and early adulthood -- the avid, voracious creation of identity through books, movies, music and cultural hero-worship. Norwegian director Joachim Trier's inspiring first feature "Reprise" joyfully tackles the process of self-creation, as well as the friendships that feed and sustain it. He captures, in a way that's cool and romantic and heady, the moment in life when nothing matters more than ideas, influences and the possibility of shaping one's life into a work of art. "Reprise" is the story of Phillip (Anders Danielsen Lie) and Erik (Espen Klouman-Hoiner), two friends who finish writing their first novels and mail them off together from the same mailbox. In their shared fantasy, which Trier tells in an artful, narrated fast-forward catapulting fashion, both books get accepted for publication. Low sales and cult authorship follow, along with tragic romances and moody trips to Paris. Then an accidental reunion, a cowritten project that sets off revolutions in faraway countries and draws the ire of religious leaders, a changed world. Of course, none of this happens, at least not in the way Phillip and Erik imagine. Phillip's book gets published and Erik's does not, but it is Erik who survives this particular calamity. Phillip's sudden minor celebrity triggers a psychotic episode and, within six months, their world looks very different from the one they had imagined. "Reprise," whose title is a play, I suppose, on the tendency in youth to play life out in the imagination as it plays itself out at a snail's pace in real life, uses things like possibility and projection into the future in the same way other films experiment with time. Unrealized potential plays a major part in the story, which is both propelled and haunted by what could have been, might have been, should have been, wasn't. Erik and Phillip are part of a larger group of friends whose dependence on one another is equaled only by their competitiveness with one another. Girlfriends also constitute a major threat to their insecure insularity. Erik keeps Lillian (Silje Hagen) at arms length for as long as he can, never involving her in any activity that will also involve his friends. Phillip's girlfriend Kari (Viktoria Winge) is partially blamed for Phillip's breakdown. (The narrator calls the relationship "obsessive," although there's no real evidence on-screen that it is.) The only person Erik truly pines for is his literary hero, the "reclusive author" Sten Egil Dahl. Erik's novel, which he eventually publishes, is called "Prosopopeia," a term from Greek drama that can mean several things: a face, mask or dramatic character; a figure of speech in which an absent or imaginary person is represented as speaking; or the personification of an abstraction. All three definitions apply to Trier's film (it's never clear what Erik's novel is about, except that it deals symbolically -- though perhaps not as symbolically as he would have liked, as evidenced by a disastrous TV appearance -- with madness), but the last definition may apply the most. Erik, Phillip and their friends spend their time and expend their imagination trying to personify abstractions, elusive ideals. It's pointless, perhaps, but they still have time to burn. "Reprise." MPAA rating: R for sexuality and language. Running time: 1 hour and 45 minutes. In limited release. Oh yeah...some movies recently released on DVD you might like: THE DIVING BELL AND THE BUTTERFLY (but i wish you'd see it on the BIG screen...will be the first film I show next semester), I'M NOT THERE (The "mythologicial" Bob Dylan Story), THE SAVAGES (Really, really, really liked this brother/sister relationship film about hopes, dreams and a dying father...but maybe more when you're older?) and THE ORPHANGE (a creepy Spanish horror film...watch with your friends late at night). OK...HAVE A GREAT WEEKEND EVERYONE!!! P.S. If any of my gay friends wanna get married, CONGRATULATIONS!!!!
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