Control Alt Delete (Canada)

Wow - not really the way I wanted to end the festival. Of course VIFF goes on all week - but I needed to head back home so Sunday night pretty much capped off my reporting from Vancouver. I had things pretty well worked out. Plan A was to see the Japanese film After School which looked interesting. Plan B - was to see The Grocer's Son from France. Unfortunately neither was available by the time I hit the evening passholder ticket lineup due to 50 Dead Men Walking running past five. I knew it was a risk and I decided to chance it. Turns out that wasn't necessarily the greatest decision on my part (though I really did like the film). Given the dearth of choices I rolled the dice on Control Alt Delete. Though going in I knew it was high risk due to the local connection. For those not clued in on this many festival goers look a bit skeptically on local productions hitting a festival. No one's saying the standards are different - but for whatever reason they seem to be more hit or miss than say the thing that's won awards at three other major festivals. But given that I was down to limited options I decided to give it a try - I mean it sounded potentially subversive enough to be enjoyable. A man who loves his computer (at first in a healthy geeky way) ruins the relationship with his girlfriend in large part due to a preference for Internet porn than a real world physical relationship. Eventually he develops a fetish that's a little more direct - copulating direction with the machine. Not that there's anything wrong with that... Different strokes for different folks I suppose.

In case you're wondering how literally you should take the computer with benefits relationship - the answer is VERY. Drilling holes into a PC, lining said holes with bubble wrap followed by enthusiastic intercourse shot from every conceivable angle - that sort of thing.

Maybe just my personal sense of humor. Sex with a pie - clearly funny. Sex with a computer - perhaps less funny but has potential. An entire movie around R-rated scenes of a dude getting biblical with a PC - turns out, not so funny. Judging from the audience laughter though it's possible that fucking a computer is inherently one of the funniest things on earth. And people make fun of the French's sense of humor...

I'll admit the story has potential - but I barely laughed at all after the first couple of scenes. The filmmaker undoubtedly had various commentaries on how sexualizing one's interaction with the PC changes people, the acceptance of people as they are, and perhaps various other deep thoughts. Technically it's well put together visually. But when you combine a bunch of folks I didn't really care about and a nonsensical story all I could think was - I've been way too hard on Growing Op.

Just a smattering of things that probably shouldn't matter that much but grated on me during the course of the film,

• Perhaps laws are different in Canada - but in the states the characters would have been working in the in a case study of "hostile work environment." But apparently in this office you'd be a millionaire if you got a dime for every time a coworker showed you porn or made reference to a sex act - and that seemed just fine.
  
• I just constantly got the feeling that this was a movie made about office work by a bunch of people who have never worked in an office - or possibly never talked to anyone who worked in one. Great office/computer movies work (for example Office Space) work because they're actually familiar to people who work in such offices.
  
• The technical stuff made practically zero sense - and the project management even less. Most folks working know what good and bad project management tend to look like in practice - and this wasn't even recognizable it was so incompetent. The fellow from The Office would have been aghast. I know that software part is hard to portray on-screen. But it's pretty obvious that the code that's constantly scrolling by has nothing whatsoever with Y2K. Unless windows UI layout has some date dependency that I cannot fathom.
  
• Everyone is pushed to finish in time so the company will have a future after Jan 1, 2000. OK - now this is a bit accurate as many Y2K conversion company's were in the markets selling a story about how there'd be some other work for them after the year 2000. Even then it seemed pretty ridiculous to build a business model that spelled out the end date in the problem description. Not surprisingly a lot of these companies didn't do so hot post the world not ending.
• Last but not least - It's probably not the safest thing to do to stick any part of you into a computer. Bad things will happen - beyond the scorn of your co-workers. How can we believe this guy is some sort of super nerd if he's not more seriously thinking of cost/benefit ratio inherent in what he's (literally) doing?

All said and done I still disliked August more in the pantheon of stupid "computer" films - but only because I tend to give credit for swinging for the fences.

Once last word - I could be completely wrong and I may someday see this for the insightful genius piece of comedy it truly is. Just in case and to provide you a bit more insight I've included the trailer below. Just be aware that it's definitely NSFW. According to the trailer it won some note at the Toronto festival - just goes to show how much I know. ;-)



Screening Notes: A huge chunk of the cast was in attendance - which wasn't completely shocking as the film was shot locally. Of course this meant that much of the audience seemed to know the director. Nothing wrong with that - Q&A seemed like it had some potential, but I had to run off to another screening. Further compounding my mistakes for the evening. More on that later.