Hot Docs 2006 - UPDATE #2

Thin
Directed by Lauren Greenfield
USA/105 MINUTES

Four women attempt to conquer their respective eating disorders at a Florida-based recovery center in Thin, a distinctly uneven documentary that's generally effective (if overlong by at least a half hour). Director Lauren Greenfield offers up an unflinching look at the slow, frustrating road to recovery for these women, all of whom seem to have been afflicted with this psychological ailment since childhood (one mentions that she was told by her pediatrician to start dieting at the age of seven). And although one can't help but marvel at the sort of access that Greenfield has been granted - the level of comfort between the filmmaker and her subjects is clearly extremely high - Greenfield's tendency to focus on the more sensationalist aspects of their individual stories becomes more and more pronounced as the film progresses (ie there's a lengthy digression involving a woman whose rebellious activities eventually get her kicked out). Still, there are more than enough genuinely moving sequences here to warrant a mild recommendation - though there's no denying that the erratic pace ultimately damages the film's overall effectiveness.

Stephen Heywood discovered that he was afflicted with ALS (better known as Lou Gehrig's Disease) when he was just 29, though this didn't stop him from getting married and having a child. So Much So Fast tracks the progression of Stephen's deterioration over the space of about five years, while also following the efforts of his brother, Jamie, to track down a cure. Jamie, unwilling to trust his sibling's fate to faceless scientists, started a foundation devoted to finding a cure by any means necessary, and went from being a small operation run out of his basement to a multi-million dollar facility within the space of a couple of years. Filmmakers Steven Ascher and Jeanne Jordan - who themselves have lost a loved one to ALS - offer up an undeniably wrenching and heartbreaking piece of work, something that's exemplified by Stephen's transformation from an active, healthy family man to a completely dependent invalid. And although some of the sequences revolving around Jamie's efforts aren't quite as enthralling as Ascher and Jordan seem to think they are, there's absolutely no denying the overall effectiveness of So Much So Fast (particularly when it remains focused on Stephen's plight).

Much like Paul Provenza's hit documentary The Aristocrats, Fuck features a wide assortment of well-known (and not-so-well known) figures espousing their views on a fairly notorious subject (a bawdy joke in The Aristocrats and the eponymous word in Fuck). But, as was the case with Provenza's film, Fuck suffers from a distinctly uneven pace and an overall vibe of pointlessness. This is largely due to the talking-head format employed by filmmaker Steve Anderson, who offers up a series of quick sound bites from the various participants - with the end result a film that primarily consists of filler, though there are a few intriguing bits here and there (ie Kevin Smith's anecdote about the first time he saw Scarface). Anderson's efforts to liven things up by employing some decidedly creative editing techniques generally fall flat, particularly his use of a trick that makes it seem as though two speakers are arguing with one another. In the end, Fuck is only sporadically effective/informative and it's certainly never a good sign when the clips within a documentary are more entertaining than the documentary itself.