LONESOME JIM will open the 29th Cleveland International Film Festival (CIFF) on Thursday, March 10th.
The film, a comedy directed by Steve Buscemi, stars Casey Affleck, Liv Tyler, Mary Kay Place, and Seymour Cassel.
Jim (Casey Affleck) is an aspiring 27-year-old writer who left the barrens of Indiana for New York City. Like most young writers who don’t have a clue, Jim left behind a rich array of material to write about. This revelation, among others, takes him awhile to figure out when he returns home to “have a breakdown” at the feet of his mother (Mary Kay Place) — a perennial font of sunshine who refuses to let anything ruin her good mood, including her petulant husband (Seymour Cassel) or her moribund son (Kevin Corrigan), who has also moved back home with his two daughters. Jim’s hopes of being laid up and idle are dashed when his brother is in a car crash and his mother needs help with the family business. Jim’s life brightens a bit when he begins dating Anika (Liv Tyler), a no-nonsense nurse with an adorable son. She even “ruins” Jim’s “wall of shame” — images of his favorite depressing writers — by putting a smile on Hemingway’s face. Is all this quirkiness enough to quench Jim’s thirst, or is he hitting the road again? LONESOME JIM’s director Steve Buscemi, producer Galt Niederhoffer, and screenwriter James C. Strouse will be in attendance at the Opening Night Gala.

The Closing Night film on Sunday, March 20th is 5 x 2. Francois Ozon’s (Eight Women, Swimming Pool) latest film depicts scenes from a marriage, complete with Bergman overtones. At the beginning, there is a break-up. Thirty-somethings Gilles and Marion are a loving married couple, but we first meet them on the occasion of their divorce. Their story is told backwards in five different segments leading to their initial meeting — a “happy ending.” Described by a critic as “intellectually trenchant and emotionally brutal,” 5 X 2 is an Ozon masterpiece.