Every burg from Portland to Columbus makes a big deal out of its filmmakers, regardless how scarce/plentiful or promising/untalented they are. Very few locales, though, can tout their practitioners of the moving image without looking at least a little ridiculous. The Bay Area is assuredly one of those places, with a remarkable array of iconoclastic and gutsy artists drawn to social-issue docs, experimental narratives and avant-garde shorts. The great surprise, therefore, is that the San Francisco Film Society’s annual Cinema By the Bay festival, unspooling this weekend at the New People Cinema in Japantown, fairly brims with accomplished narrative features.
The disarming opening night film, Trattoria (Friday, Nov. 9 at 7 and 9:30pm), directed by Jason Wolos from a screenplay he wrote with partner Dawn Rich, warmly invites us into the life of a semi-successful middle-aged chef. Sal Sartini (wonderfully portrayed by Tony Denison) has earned grudging respect from the critics (there’s just one that matters in this town, actually, as the movie makes clear), but has yet to break through into the upper rank of destination restaurants. His ambition, along with a demanding, nay uncompromising, attitude toward cooking and food, has a cost, embodied by the estranged son who’s just returned from the East Coast after several years living with Sam’s ex-wife. Does Vince (a winsome John Patrick Amedori) want to follow his dad into the business, or is he a slacker meandering down his own path?