MOVIE REVIEWS : USC Student Films Show Talent and Humane Quality

The lavish University of Southern California Cinema School program “First Look,” which begins tonight, offers 26 student films in four programs, most mixing the usual USC high polish and technical expertise with the new emphasis on challenging scripts encouraged by Frank Daniel, dean of the school. Overall, it’s a fine selection.

The screenings, which continue on Thursday, next Tuesday and June 22, all at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in Beverly Hills, at 7:30 p.m., show less high-concept glitz, more humane grit.

For the students themselves, there’s a new inducement: a school agreement with Jonathan Krane of Management Co. Entertainment Group, which will underwrite the semi-annual showings, to develop one or more of these scripts and finance one or more directors. A fine spur, but it suggests a problem: As in many other college film programs, USC’s, as of now, doesn’t guarantee a fair contest. Some films look as if they cost $100,000 or more; some, obviously much less. As always, the student who, through independent means or family connections, has access to more money, gets a built-in, highly questionable edge.

Those moral issues, however, are for others. We can content ourselves with a salute to all the participants: all the high talent and hard work visible here.

Tonight’s screening includes two engagingly paranoid “What if?” comedies: Bruce Worrilow’s “The Worst That Could Happen”--what if an energetic pet-shop Don Juan impregnated all three of his revolving girlfriends? And Tony Kant’s darker-hued “An Even Break”--what if a distracted wrecker involved in a custody battle tore down the wrong house and got blackmailed by his boss into a life of crime? Also: Sharon Altman’s charming ethnographic cartoon, “Maheo’s Dance,” and David Parks’ “Images” a marriage memoir that suggests TV ad montages at their most lushly sorrowful.

Somewhat more serious is James Middleton’s “Solo Run,” a very compassionate study of the relationship of a young boy, his lesbian mother and his prejudiced father and stepmother. And David Hartwell’s “Slipknot”--longest and flashiest of the films--uses Spielberg-DePalma camera angles and glistening colors for the hysterical story of a young girl watching her brother slide into drugs and madness. Hartwell doesn’t indict the usual villains of these “Splendor in the Grass”-style romantic essays--the parents--and, at times, he overtips into “Reefer Madness” camp. But he doesn’t shoot a dull frame and his lead actress, Kate Hall, has powerful moments.

Program 2 (Thursday) includes two interesting documentaries: Brian Fairlee’s “My Friends, My Friends” on teen-age drunk driving in a small Northern California town and Maria Gallagher’s more ambitious “Face Value,” which follows a young 15-year-old prospective cover girl through the glib wilderness of high-fashion huckstering. Elizabeth Passarelli’s “Dark Rooms,” a blend of documentary techniques and drama, re-creates the dilemma of a young girl date-raped at a party, with unusual truth and objectivity. Mar Elepano and Screescanda’s “A La Turk” adds visual embellishments patterned on Norman McLaren and Oskar Fischinger onto the Dave Brubeck Quartet’s “Blue Rondo.” And “Channing,” directed by John Shorney and written by Adam Belanoff (one of several films transferred from video), has effective low-key child acting--by Gary Cohen and Joshua Smith, in a pleasant, if oft-repeated, tale of the brainy kid and his schoolyard tormentor.

On Program 3, (next Tuesday), another, more conventional small town--with youngsters seeking escape, ensnared by villains and daddy-cops--turns up in “Shelter in the Storm,” directed by David Klass, written by Alex Graves. Both “Jack Falls Down” (directed by John Kim, written by Michael Matlock) and “Life Could be Worse” (directed by Ron Rosen, written by Jeff X. Rothstein) offer romantic fables about games with the hereafter. Death intrudes in the former, to bring a couple of insurance people dangerously together in a clock-race dance of murder. In the latter, more comically, an obsessed Jewish mortuary owner, gets advice from the beyond on handling his recalcitrant son; here, the acting ensemble tempers sitcom exaggerations with cute, deft little throwaways.

On Program 4 (June 22), Todd Yellin’s racily funny, high-pressure “The Eternal Pitch” has another clock-race: a gambling telephone salesman trying to snap up 10 customers by midnight to save himself from disaster. Howard Slavitt’s “Summer Rain” is another memory piece--with sexual tensions lurking under a Norman Rockwell period family outing. Charles Evans’ “Second Son,” a slightly strained melodrama about a rich boy seeking to rescue his black ex-maid from drunkenness and her macho Marine son, has poignant central performances by singer Ketty Lester, Byron Thames and Michael James. And Dennis Dimster-Denk’s “Concrete River,” the only overtly experimental work, is a good, impressionistic study of the L.A. freeways, with an undercurrent of malaise and melancholy.

One fascinating comparison: The widely different films that two directors, Rusty Gorman and Nicole Bettauer, make from the same screenplay: Paul McCudden’s excellent medieval fable, “Tree of Battles”--with its intense evocation of a plague-ridden France, a wandering, English knight and the French peasant boy yoked to him, by death and isolation. Both versions work: Gorman’s (on Thursday) is more real, rawer, closer to the ground, shot through the weeds and dirt; Bettauer’s (next Tuesday) is more glossily epic and picturesque, in the “Ladyhawke” vein.

Information: (213) 306-5837.