Sundance 2009: Love amongst the geeks

When you walk up Park City's Main Street during the festival's first weekend, or go to any of the Premiere selection screenings at the mammoth Eccles Theater, you're likely to see certain types of Sundance attendants. They're usually the sort of well-heeled locals who sport big fur hats, expensive cashmere coats and pricey tans, or maybe they're out-of-towners rocking impressive L.L.Bean winter wear, all lookie-loo-ing around in the hopes of catching a glimpse of a celebrity in the flesh. The press screenings, however, offer a far different variety of filmgoer. These folks are pale and pasty, in bulky coats and threadbare toques, blessed with a posture that suggests too many hours hunched over a laptop and a brain filled with obscure pop knowledge. They blink like moles when they exit the Yarrow Hotel's screening room. Their social skills run the gamut from charmingly nerdy, at least among their own ranks, to borderline autistic. These are the press corp's hard-core geeks. The number of journalists and industry players attending this year may be down significantly from 2008 (the decrease number was around 6,000, a figure I haven't been able to confirm but seems totally plausible). Yet the movie Moorlocks are still legion here.

Big Fan may take place in the world of sports fanatics, but those goggle-eyed obsessives will recognize the clammy, claustrophobic realm this character study portrays with alarming accuracy; they may even mistake it for a documentary. The directorial debut of former Onion editor and The Wrestler screenwriter Robert D. Siegel follows one Paul Aufiero (Patton Oswalt, pitch-perfect), the world's most rabid NY Giants devotee. When this Staten Islander is not manning the booth at his parking-attendant job or telling his landlord, a.k.a. Mom, to leave him alone, Paul is hanging out in Giants Stadium's parking lot with his best friend (Kevin Corrigan) or calling talk radio shows to profess his love. Then he spots his favorite player at a gas station one night and decides to follow him to a Times Square strip club. Paul approaches the athlete and starts gushing. Then his idol beats the crap out of him, and Mr. Superfan's faith is shattered beyond repair.

A throwback to the loner cinema of the 1970s (Oswalt joked at the premiere's Q&A that the film should have been called Fatsy Driver), Siegel's film treats this pathetic schlub with a mixture of bemused condescension and bruised humanity. Paul's humiliation among the faithful once the player gets suspended—and thus could cost the Giants a shot at the playoffs—starts the slow burn that, per the rules of antihero-on-the-brink movies, dictates a violent end. Yet even the climax, in which the desperate loser decides to pay a visit to his nemesis—the world's biggest Philadelphia Eagles fan—knows how to lace a descent into madness with a tweaked sense of humor. A little less class superiority would have done the film wonders (yes, his family members are Fellini-esque grotesques and their interior decorating sense is tacky…we get it), but even the caricaturing doesn't upset Big Fan's balancing act. The festival's geek squad were giggling with glee after the screening and professing their love. For once, we have something in common.

You can see how Paper Heart would also appeal to these dedicated cine-dorks, though its primary targets are the ironic T-shirt crowd and a demographic that considers "sweet" and "cute" to be the highest of praise. Partially an exploration of the mysterious nature of amour and partially a chronicle of two twentysomethings so painfully unhip that they're beyond hip, Nicholas Jasenovec's faux-doc/fictional re-creation of a blooming relationship between two famous friends may pierce the heart of people who find compatible Facebook favorite-film lists to be the ultimate in romance. Everyone else will find it insufferable.

Comedian-actor and cynic Charlyne Yi (she was the couch-potato girlfriend in Knocked Up) doesn't believe in love, or that she'll ever fall in love. So what better way to find out whether matters of the heart are only a myth than by interviewing everyday people and eccentric kooks? College professors, Elvis impersonators who officiate weddings in Vegas, burly bikers, divorce lawyers and a psychic all offer their opinions to Yi, which prompts purposefully crude puppet-show reenactments of anecdotes (groan) and the film's guide to unleashing the world's most uncomfortably affected giggle (triple groan). Along the way, Yi meets Michael Cera, and the two start dating, camera in tow. True love soon blooms, and your tolerance for tweeness is tested beyond the limits set by the Geneva Convention. I don't fault Yi for wanting to delve into the subject, or her director's meddlesome meta asides, or even the real-life couple's desire to commemorate their own meet-cute courtship. I do know that Yi's stammering shtick grates within milliseconds, however, and that indulgent narcissism and insight are two vastly different things.

Compared with Paper Heart's cloying version of moon-eyed romance, I Love You Phillip Morris seems positively dazzling. But don't mistake this true-life tale of a convicted con man (Jim Carrey) who goes gaga over a fellow inmate (Ewan McGregor) for anything other than a monument to the allure of gay-for-pay roles for actors. I'm not saying that watching Carrey and McGregor cuddle while my fellow patrons shifted in their seats wasn't gratifying on its own (if people thought Humpday was going to make folks squirm, they should see how an audience reacts to witnessing one of the world's best-known movie stars loudly sodomizing someone onscreen). It's just that the sheer amount of swishiness on display starts to undermine any points that writer-directors Glenn Ficarra and John Requa are making about how the power of love will force people to do crazy, and extremely illegal, things. When someone writes the history of pinkface performances, this film will get its own chapter.