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Rumba, which begins its run on Friday, May 22, following a
Wednesday-evening preview, is a loopy slab of filmic absurdism that has
more in common with the work of Samuel Beckett and Eugene Ionesco than
with the movies of Keenan Ivory Wayans and Judd Apatow. Dominique Abel
and Fiona Gordon (who co-directed with fellow actor Bruno Romy) portray
a couple whose love of dance soon meets an immovable object: the wall
of the tunnel into which their car crashes. The filmmakers have highly
unusual ideas about comedy gold — jokes revolve around suicidal
despair, the loss of a limb and brain damage — and thanks to
their essential disinterest in dialogue, many scenes play like deadpan
sketches from the silent era. The results are predictably scattershot,
and the gags that bomb tend to go thermonuclear. But a handful of bits
are guffaw-worthy, depending on how wrong one’s sense of humor is, and
the highly stylized look serves as a welcome distraction when the
viewer is left waiting for Godot, or a reasonable facsimile.
Screenings are at 5 and 7:30 p.m. at Starz FilmCenter in the Tivoli
building. Tickets range from $6 for Denver Film Society members to
$9.50; call 303-595-3456 or visit www.denverfilm.org for details.
