Abacus: Small Enough to Jail
Abacus: Small Enough to Jail
You recall mortgage fraud. It was at the heart of banking crisis that, a few years ago, brought the global economy to the edge of the abyss. In terms of criminal prosecutions, the big banks emerged largely unscathed, but one New York bank spent a fortune fighting charges related to mortgage fraud in the late 2000s. Was it one of the international giants? No, it was Abacus Federal Savings Bank, a Chinatown-based company that, with its six branches, is the 2,651st biggest bank in the U.S. Director Steve James’s compelling documentary Abacus: Small Enough to Jail tells the story. It will make you angry.
In 2012, New York County District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. announced scores of charges against Abacus. They stemmed from claims that Abacus arranged home loans based on fraudulent information, then sold them to Fannie Mae, the national entity that repackages mortgages. After the announcement, there followed an incident that James examines closely: Numerous bank employees were arrested, and they were chained together before they were led into court — “herded like cattle,” as one interviewee says. The optics were terrible, and they are at the core of the film’s claim that the prosecutors’ methods were, at best, culturally insensitive. “It was very unfortunate,” Vance says in an awkward interview.
Abacus was founded by Thomas Sung, who was born in Shanghai in the 1930s and immigrated to the U.S. at age 16. His daughters run the bank, and the family members are mesmerizing to watch as they share meals and talk over each other at business meetings. The film follows them as the trial proceeds, and courtroom scenes are reenacted by voiceover performers. No one disputes that lower-level bank employees committed fraud, and that they were enabled partly by the cash-based economy of the Chinatown retail scene, which is documented in fascinating detail. As for the outcome of the trial, I’ll let you find out from the film — although if you were reading headlines in June 2015, you already know.
Paris 05:59: Théo & Hugo
Paris 05:59: Théo & Hugo
You’ll remember Paris 05:59: Théo & Hugo for the lovely dialogue, the actors’ stirring chemistry, the beautiful photography of Paris. Oh yeah, you’ll also remember it for the orgy. That 18-minute scene takes place at the beginning of this striking film, in a gay sex club. It is really graphic. It leaves little, like maybe 5 percent, to the imagination. Only a handful of filmmakers, including Catherine Breillat, have depicted sex so explicitly for mainstream audiences.
Théo (Geoffrey Couët) and Hugo (François Nambot) forge a connection in this sex-first-names-later-maybe milieu, and when they leave the club, late at night, they go on a joyful bike ride through the deserted streets. Then horror sets in as they share devastating information: Théo didn’t wear a condom, and Hugo is HIV-positive. A tense scene in a hospital follows, and writers/directors Olivier Ducastel and Jacques Martineau bring a documentary fascination to the emergency drug treatment that may prevent Théo from getting infected.
What comes next is gorgeous the way Before Sunrise is gorgeous. In the predawn hours, Théo & Hugo walk around the city and get acquainted. They talk about the past, their work, their dreams. They meet a couple of strangers whose briefly told stories are fascinating counterpoints to the main plot. Hugo, who is more philosophical than Théo, tells how reading Balzac inspired him to become a notary, and it’s the sort of thing that could only happen in a French movie.
They also playfully chase each other around, and kiss a little. Judging by this film, if you’re looking for a place to fall in love, you could do a lot worse than Paris at night.
Sami Blood
Sami Blood
“Circus animal” is one of the milder insults the locals hurl Elle Marja’s way. She is one of the Sami, the reindeer-herding indigenous people of northern Scandinavia, and she faces a series of humiliations as she enters mainstream society in the marvelous Swedish drama Sami Blood. As played beautifully by the remarkable Lene Cecilia Sparrok, the teenage Elle Marja struggles to reconcile her ambitions with the institutionalized bigotry of 1930s Sweden.
Early in the film, Elle Marja and her sister (Mia Erika Sparrok) leave their family’s tent for a Sami boarding school overseen by a teacher (Hanna Alström) who is kind, but only up to a point. After Elle Marja has a sweet romantic encounter with a boy (Julius Fleischanderl) at a dance, she flees for cosmopolitan Uppsala and tries to put her past behind her.
Sami Blood was written and directed by Amanda Kernell, whose father is Sami. I learned a lot from it about a place I have never visited, and that is the great gift of international cinema.
