Tuvalu

Drawing from the influences of Georges Méliès, Jean Vigo, Buster Keaton, and Franz Kafka, noted German filmmaker Veit Helmer directs this atmospheric, darkly comic film about attendants at a public swimming pool. Lonely Anton (Denis Lavant) watches over his bathhouse located in the midst of a barren industrial moonscape. He spends much of his time pining for a life on the ocean and thinking of ways to trick his sightless father into believing that their run-down establishment is actually thriving. Anton's narrow world comes crashing down when his wife spurns him after her father is killed in one of Anton's pools because of his devious brother Gregor's misdeeds. Gregor hopes to raze the place in order to put up some slick development project, but Anton and the pool's bizarre assortment of regulars band together to save the historic building. Soon Anton finds himself struggling valiantly to save both his dad's prized bathhouse and to win back the woman he loves. Tuvalu was screened at the 1999 San Sebastian Film Festival. — Jonathan Crow