the LAST FILM YOU'VE SEEN thread

Oscar,

Reading what you've written in the past about JJL makes me feel almost like a plagarist. My comments only amplify yours.

I liked "Mrs. Parker And The Vicious Circle" (though I generally hate Alan Rudolph films) but I think the bon mots given to Leigh were too familiar to be witty. (I'm pretty sure everyone's heard the "Katherine Hepburn runs the emotional gamut from A to B" line a hundred times before.) What I liked about her performance was her vulnerability which ran contrary to the image Parker publicly projected; to me, it seemed, well, if not, as Chris writes, "instinctive", then well thought-out. Leigh is nothing if not highly intelligent; her roles seem more choices borne from restlessness than jobs; you can understand why she chooses them.

I've only seen two of the other selections Oscar mentions in his comment about outstanding female performances in the previous decade. I very much was impressed--and continue to be--by Emily Watson. I'm afraid I differ, though, as far as Juliette Binoche. Perhaps it's because I'm not a big fan of Kieslowski, and I find "Blue" to be the weakest of the trilogy. Binoche's dourness in "Blue" bordered to me on whining. Her ecstasy at the film's conclusion seemed no ecstasy at all, just overwhelming sadness that she couldn't get past. If that's ecstasy, I'd want no part of it. (I did like her in "The English Patient", though and thought her Acadamy Award was a pleasant surprise.)

Originally posted by bix171
Leigh is nothing if not highly intelligent; her roles seem more choices borne from restlessness than jobs; you can understand why she chooses them.

-She's said she's not interested in playing ingenues or girls-next-door or any part created to "prove that the leading character is heterosexual".
-A movie of hers many have forgotten is Last Exit to Brooklyn. She won accolades from Critics' Societies for that role. But who am I kidding...I like everything she does. She's great in the made-for-TV Bastard out of Carolina, for instance.
-I can't wait for the release of her husband Noah Baumbach's follow up to The Squid and the Whale. JJL has a major part in it.

Olivier Assayas: Les Destinées/Les destinées sentimentales (2000). Netflix DVD.

This is basically a love story -- with elaborate period trappings, primarily the intermittent chronicle of a Limoges porcelain factory belonging to the family of protestant minister Jean Barnery (the recessive yet somehow adorable Charles Berling, with a ginger moustache), whose first wife Nathalie (Isabelle Huppert, as haughty as ever) he banishes, suspecting an infidelity, then brings back, then divorces -- and loses their little girl.

Jean's naturally sweeter second spouse (based on the actresses' two personalities) is Pauline (Emmanuelle Béart). This is the love story. The warmest moments are their embraces. Feeling guilty about his ill treatment of Isabelle's character, Jean renounces the ministry, gives away his factory stock, and goes to live in Switzerland on a comfortable annuity with Pauline, with nothing to do but embrace and get lost in the mist.

But a death in the family -- and the need for something to happen -- requires Jean to take on the reins of the porcelain factory -- become its manager or gérant. Pauline doesn't want him to go, but their love survives. Versatile man, he's also in the army during WWI and seems coarsened by that period. There is the irony, that the factory is making the best porcelain ever, and the workers are on strike because they suffer. The story takes us and the factory up to and beyond the economic crisis of the Great Depression, to the decline of the factory and of Jean.

This is a saga, and it runs three hours. It seems odd that anyone as sophisticated and up to date as Olivier Assayas would film a nineteenth-century novel (by Jacques Chardonne, 1884-1968), but he does it well. Perhaps the story is lacking in dramatic incident and inevitably feels like a toney TV miniseries. But, as Roger Ebert wisely wrote, if you're patient and give it time to unfold, this is a film that has rewards for you. Of course on a DVD you can split it into smaller segments, as a cable company also might do.

The not-so-hidden strength of the film is the depth and subtlety given to the many secondary characters, which go hand in hand with fine costumes and rich mise-en-scène. If it has a greatest weakness it's a certain blandness at times in Berling's character and vacuous sweetness in Béart's--despite all the little changes and vicissitudes they and their relationship go through, and despite the fact that they're both quite wonderful in their roles, especially Berling. Nothing radical here. It's as if Assays is saying, "See, I can do conventional stuff if I want to." But that's not all he wanted. This has the rewards, which are precisely those of a long historical novel--capturing the values of another era, capturing the passage of time itself. For me what's rather thrilling is to see a Limoges porcelain factory of a hundred years ago recreated, working full tilt. A French filmmaking team can do this--because the tradition lives. And so do the delicate plates with their translucent Moon-glow glazes. After all is said and done this is a beautiful film, which redeems Assayas' experimentalism but perhaps also underlines his lack of a central concern.

Olivier Ducastel and Jacques Martineau, Jeanne and the Perfect Boy/Jeanne et le garçon formidable 1998. Netflix DVD.

This earthier update of the French movie musical style defined by Jacques Demy (whose son Matthieu is the male lead here) is a must-see for anyone with gay and AIDS-related interests or French musical film interests. Virginie Ledoyen is stunning and wonderful in the girl who sleeps around, then finds Mr. Right and he turns out to be HIV-positive. This earlier film is the most notable yet by the director team.

Alain Cavalier, The Heartbeat/La Chamade 1969. Netflix DVD.

Starring Catherine Deneuve and Michel Piccoli with Belgian beanpole Roger van Hool as the flacid young male cutie Deneuve goes off to live in a posh Paris garret with, abandoning her rich, devoted boyfriend (Piccoli). The upper-bourgeois self indulgence of this film is amusing to watch, it has a few good moments, but its greatest virtue may be its harmlessness. Except for the makeup and elaborate hairdos of the women, the styles aren't as out of date as you'd expect.

François Ozon, Short Films. Ca. 1994-98. Netflix DVD.

As in the first François Ozon film given as a bonus in the US DVD of his Sitcom, it's all there -- the provocation, the playfulness, the sexual ambiguity, the classically simple style. Much reliance on closeups and dialog except for the mostly silent longer X-2000, these, which primarily deal with sex, are notable for their economy, elegance, and wit. There's not much to them, but what can you expect in five minutes?

Jack Nicholson stars as a depressed, compromised reporter who assumes a dead gun runner's identity in Michelangelo Antonioni's 1975 laid-back thriller that's more brooding than suspenseful. It also, as an "art" film, holds up pretty well. Only occasionally does it lapse into pretentiousness and some of the acting--even Nicholson's--is quite stiff. But it works, thanks to Antonioni's detached, dispassionate mise en scene, perfectly complemented by Luciano Tovoli's photography of the arid landscapes of most of the film's locations. That makes sense, given that they're symbols of Nicholson's emptiness.

Antonioni. The Passenger AKA Professione: reporter (1975).

I saw it when it came out but liked it better seeing the new print first shown at the 2005 New York Film Festival. I was impressed by the much admired long final tracking shot. Up in the Festival Coverage section 2005 if it interests you you can read my review from back then. But your description is fine.

Benoit Jacquot, A Single Girl/Une fille seule (1995). Netflix DVD.

Valérie (Virginie Ledoyen), a young woman who's just discovered she's pregnant, breaks up with her unemployed boyfriend Rémi (Benoit Magimel) in a café, and we then watch her go through her first day of work for room service in an elegant Parisian hotel. Valérie wards off the advances of a male coworker, chats with her mom on guest's phones, delivers breakfasts, walks in on couples having sex, etc. The film is elegant, well-made, minimalist, with concentrated little scenes, all involving Ledoyen, whose self-possession is as striking as her looks -- but she conveys uncertainty and immaturity as well as boldness. Jacquot skillfully gives the effect of real time, though events are really sharply condensed: all these scenes couldn't quite unfold in just seventy-five minutes. Viewers looking for a story line rather than the understated character development on offer will go away disappointed. The fifteen-minute epilogue has parallels with the ending of Jacquot's 1998 School of Flesh. This is a movie that seems more interesting when closely examined on a DVD. Watching it originally in a theater, I felt shortchanged. But the way Valérie's maturity is defined by her two brief scenes with Rémi is sharp, and the use of close-ups is fine, always at the right moment. And yet, when all this is considered, there is still a certain coldness and emptiness about the film.

Francis Girod, Transfixed (2001). Netflix DVD.

American commentators seem to regard this "polar noir" set in Belgium with a young transvestite at its center called Bo (Robinson Stevenin, praised by everybody) as trashy and pointless. It may have too much plot (a child-molestation case featuring Bo's dad; a serial killer in the trannie prostitute community; Bo's dangerous attraction to a handsome brutish gigolo blackmailer called Johnny (Stephane Metzger) that indeed doesn't lead anywhere too much. But nice cinematography, the elegant Richard Bohringer as chief investigator of both crime cases, and the film's sympathy toward all the characters, even the most twisted ones, might make this worth watching, except that the English subtitles on the American DVD are several beats behind the actual dialogue, which makes the film impossible to follow, and the elaborate mystery-melodrama explanation at the end is quite ridiculous. This was a great role for Stevenin, who got a Cesar for it, but everybody deserved better material.

Claude Miller, Alias Betty/Betty Fisher et autres histoires (2001). Netflix DVD.

A successful novelist (Sandrine Kiberlain) loses her little boy in an accident and her nutty mother (Nicole Garcia) kidnaps a similar-looking boy as a replacement. Various other people come into the story, Kiberlain's husband, the kidnapped boy's mother (Mathilde Seigner) from the projects and her unemplyed boyfriend, the boy's father, a gigolo who tries to sell a rich woman's house to a Russian mafia couple, etc. This is based on an English novel I'm not familiar with. Praised by some as sly and witty. I found it uninvolving, scattered, and strange. Marred initially by the brutality of Garcia's performance: she seems to confuse madness with grumpiness. Doesn't work nearly as well as Miller's previous film, Class Trip/Classe de neige (1998).

Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Pulse (2001). Netflix DVD.

Michael Joshoa Rowan on Indie-wire refers to characters in "techno-wary J-horror films like 'Ringu' and 'Pulse,' who find themselves encountering supernatural phenomena while routinely using modern media." This is nowhere near as haunting and good as Kurosawa's Cure but the visuals are better than the earlier (1998) Ringu's, I think. The genre is repetitious, but Kurosawa is a real stylist. Rooms are seen from a distance, with the young protagonists dimly in the back rather than in closeup. Everything is cold, dim, and austere, with a color-drained color in which yellow and green predominate. Impending doom is strongly hinted at from the first scene. Unfortunately we've seen it before.

Christophe Malavoy: The Fire That Burns (1996, TV). Netflix dvd.

The French title of this film is "La ville ou le prince est un enfant" -- a line from the Bible quoted by the Father Superior at the pre-WWII Catholic school where this takes place: "The city where the king is a child." It's not where you want to be: emotionally in thrall to a young boy. But that's just where Abbe Pratz (Christophe Malavoy, who also directed the film) is: he has an excessive affection for a boy named Souplier (Clement van den Bergh). Since Souplier happens to be involved in an "amiti� particuliere," a "special friendship" of the schoolboy homo kind, with an older boy, Sevrais (Na�l Marandin), Pratz deliberately entraps the boys at one of their secret meetings and expels Sevrais so he can have Souplier all to himself. But the Father Superior (Michel Aumont) is onto Abbe Pratz's pedophile attraction and expels Souplier too. Abb� Pratz and the Father Superior have a long final scene in the chapel more appropriate to the stage than the screen (this is based on a 1951 play of the same name by Henry de Montherlant) in which the Father Superior chastens Pratz and urges him to think of "souls" and not "faces" and love God instead of little boys.

Readers of Roger Peyrefitte's 1943 novel Les amities particulieres/Special Friendships or viewers of the excellent 1964 black and white Jean Delannoy film based on it will know what to expect from the secret meetings between Souplier and Sevrais -- the sweet kisses and adoring looks from the older boy and cigarettes and declarations of selfless loyalty and love, always conducted in some hidden storeroom. But this film by Malavoy on the template laid down by Montherlant, though beautifully staged, with handsome costumes, good cinematography and nice music (including a boy choir), isn't nearly as intricate and entertaining as the web of manipulation and deceit woven by Peyrefitte, who went on from Catholic school to become a professional diplomat. Peyrefitte's novel and the Delanoy film go more deeply into psychology, boy love, and school politics. In a sense Special Friendships can be seen as essentially a boy-boy love version of the Machiavellian mindset behind the 1784 Choderlos de Laclos classic of love manipulation and revenge, Dangerous Liaisons, set under the rules of a Catholic school instead of a royal court. The Fire That Burns is different because its concern is the responsibility of the priest to repress his pedophile tendencies in an institution teeming with young boys (he doesn't consider that they might just ask for a transfer). But a look at Montherlant's biography reveals that he was expelled from a Catholic school himself for a relationship with a younger pupil, and he had a lengthy correspondence with Peyrefitte, so he knew whereof he spoke; and despite its recent date this TV film captures the period mood and atmosphere.

Philippe De Broca: En Garde (Le bossu) (1997). With Daniel Auteuil, Fabrice Lucchini, Vincent Perez, Marie Gillain, Philippe Noiret, and others. Netflix DVD.

Would not recommend this to anybody unless you love swashbucking fencing movies, but for that, it's excellent, and I've never seen Daniel Auteuil having so much fun. Vincent Perez as his noble adversary early in the film looks very happy too. Fabrice Lucchini as always makes an articulate, if somewhat lightweight, villain. Marie Gillain is lovely. The story has implausible elements and some of the links from point A to point B are just not there. The fending sequences are the best thing. De Broca was getting old and didn't have the touch he had when he did the swashbuckler Cartouche; Devil by the Tail; and the classic Belmondo vehicle That Man from Rio. The French title means "the hunchback," which I guess is what Americans call a "spoiler," since it gives away the significance of what might seem at first a minor character. The American distributors dropped that titles, which had been used seven times by then, for one that had only been used three times.

Jules Dassin, Rififi. 1955. Criterion DVD.

A recent re-issue of the French crime film (original title Du Rififi Chez les Hommes),with its famous 20-minute silent jewel heist sequence, now comes in the US in a gorgeous new print from The Criterion Collection with improved subtitles and some extras. Jules Dassin was an American (born Julius Dassin in Middletown Connecticut) who was forced to make films in Europe because he was Blacklisted. Rififi was well publicized in the US and did well in art houses. Later Dassin became a lot more famous in the US for Never on Sunday (1960) starring his wife, the Greek actress and political activist Melina Mercouri. (Greece was again glamorized and popularized for Americans and others with Anthony Quin in Mihalis Kakogiannis' 1964 Zorba the Greek, which was even a big hit in Cairo.) The new Rififi DVD includes a recent interview with Dassin. I did not previously realize that one of the main robbers, Cesar the Milanese, was played by Dassin, who stepped in when the original actor became unavailable. He's one of the most memorable characters, a dandified Italian safe cracker who speaks no French.

Although this classic has all the trappings of French film noir, the black and white twilight world of well lit apartments, shiny black cars, men in suits, the nightclub scenes, including a dramatically filmed and lit title song performed at the club, the stony faces and the Gauloises in hand or mouth, I don't think it's as atmospheric or has quite as distinctive a style as Melville's films do. But there's the mesmirizing robbery, which still holds up today as a tour de force. It goes like clockwork, with a fine sense of craft and teamwork among the robbers. Some nosy cops are efficiently dealt with. Things quickly go wrong after they go home and distribute the loot when one of the players gets sloppy and gives a dame a ring with a million-dollar bangle in it. Has there ever been a heist film whose perps lived happily ever after?

It's the wordless heist sequence that guarantees this a special place, and Dassin deserves credit for that. He took a novel so conventional he was going to reject it, and added some key elements that make it special. In the event, he couldn't reject doing the adaptation: he needed the money too much. Jean Servais, who plays the lead character Tony le Stephanois, was an actor rather down on his luck. His grim face is perfect for the role. He was later to play the lead in Dassin's He Who Must Die (1957), which used French actors in Greece for a political tale. Topkapi is a somewhat disappointing 1964 caper film (it pales compared to Rififi) that also got US distribution. It does have a good setting, but it's wasted, gone all bland and bright and prettified. Of Dassin's post-Hollywood oeuvre, Never on Sunday, with its catchy theme song and charismatic heroine, is the popular choice (and won Best Film at Cannes 1960); He Who Must Die the political choice; Rififi the genre choice. An odd piece is his Phaedra with Mercouri and Tony Perkins (1962). Purists of tough-guy Hollywood genre work would eschew these and favor Dassin's early films, which include a prison drama, Brute Force (1947);a cop flick, The Naked City (1948); and two hard core noirs, Thieves' Highway (1949), and Night and the City (1950). Personally I tend to like Frenh noir and neo-noir spinoffs better than the original source material--hence my enduring fascination with Rififil. But Dassin is rather unique in having not only made Hollywood noir but then going over to Paris and producing a memorable example of its Fifties French derivative.

Lucas Belvaux, Un couple épatant/An Amazing Couple (2002). Netflix DVD.

The Belgian director's trilogy, number two as shown in the US, but shown first in French theaters, this is a domestic comedy (the title is ironic) about a hypochondriac and increasingly paranoid small tech business owner Alain (Francois Morel) who runs around hiding from his wife that he's going to have a very minor operation because he absurdly thinks it's going to be the death of him. His wife Cecile (Ornella Muti) senses that he's sneaking around and, thinking he's having an affair, gets her friend Agnes' cop husband (Gilbert Melki) to follow him, which makes him more paranoid. Eventually things end up at the chalet where Belvaux's escaped political prisoner character (central in the Cavale/On the Run panel) is hiding--the chalet being the main link with other episodes. This is generally and not without reason considered the weakest of the three films in The Trilogy. It's thin and repetitious pretty much throughout, and though poised as a comedy, its main character's obsession with death is hardly funny.

As one French critic wrote, he might have done better if he'd just made one good film. Mahohla Dargis wrote that The Trilogy was "more conceptually fascinating than cinematically engaging." "'The Trilogy'" (she also wrote) "is nothing if not a logistical coup. Inspired by the way genre determines meaning, Belvaux used three editing teams to shape his overlapping stories and the results are [these three films]." In the third, which I haven't seen yet, Apres la vie/After the Life, the genre is drama (or melodrama) and in it Melki, the cop, falls in love with Cecile, the wife who's hired him to investigate her husband. It's generally agreed that Melki shines in The Trilogy. I also like Catheriine Frot, who is important in Cavale.

Belvaux's Trilogy is good material for a film course (comparison of genres, alternate takes, etc.), but the basic material could be better. The hope with Belvaux's Trilogy has to be that the whole is more than the parts.

Laurent Cantet, Human Resources/Resources humaines (1999). Netflix DVD.

This drama about a labor-management conflict tearing apart a father-son relationship is truly one of the finest French films of the last decade and is a must for anyone interested in contemporary films on social issues. Terrific performances especially by Jean-Claude Vallod as the factory worker father, Jalil Lespert as the management-trainee son, Chantal Barré as his mother, and Danielle Mélador as the feisty rep of the Communist-backed CGT union--among others. Though Cantet's subsequent films (Time Out/L'Emploi du temps. 2001, Heading South/Vers le sud, 2005) have been interesting, he has yet to hit on anything as strong as this. First time I've seen this film again since it appeared briefly in a Berkeley theater in 2000, and it moved me just as deeply as it did then. For a good online description and review, go here.

Nicolas Philibert, To Be and To Have/Etre et avoir (2002). Netflix DVD.

This documentary of a a French schoolteacher in rural, high-up St. Etienne sur Usson focuses on his few students of various elementary school levels all in one room, and the soon-to-retire teacher George Lopez's firmness and patience. Another of the best French films of the last decade, which understandably holds up on re-viewing and a masterpiece of the thorough and unobtrusive documentary style.

Claude Chabrol:

Inspector Lavardin (1986)
Cop au Vin/Poulet au vinaigre (1985)
The Color of Lies/Au coeur du mensonge(1999). Netflix DVD's.

Lavardin ( Jean Poiret) debuts with Cop au Vin and his charm is a certain scofflaw cynicism; there was a two-segment TV series follow-up in '88 and Lavardin might have continued but Poiret died of a heart attack in 1992. The first film features Lucas Belvaux of The Trilogy as the bullied son of a neurotic handicapped mother (Stephane Audran). The second is considered inferior, but I'm not sure I'd agree, because it features a deliciously self-centered and corrupt bourgeois family (including Jean-Claude Brialy) who're somehow tied in with a suspicious club owner.

The Color of Lies reminded me of Patricia Highsmith with its tormented painter suspected of merder. The whole Breton town has secrets and this time the puffed-up self-satisfied bourgeois is a French media star who favors extra-long cigars and adultery. Sometimes I think Chabrol is more interested in character and situation than narrative arc, so the suspense and whodonit aspects of his crime stories sometimes get lost, but all three of these are watchable.

Marcel Gisler, Fogi is a Bastard/Fogi est un saloud (1996). Netflix DVD.

This gay-friendly Swiss French film about a drugged-out punk singer who has an obsessive, dysfunctional affair with a 15-year-old boy groupie pushes the edge of the permissible and the believable and does not go anywhere but downhill, though it isn't without a certain sweetness. Deserves a tiny spot in the roster of drug and music films somewhere is a remote branch off from Velvet Goldmine and Sid and Nancy.

Laurent Cantet, The Sanguinaires/Les Sanguinaires (1999). Netflix NVD.

Les Sanguinaires is the name of an island where a bunch of Parisians go in December 1999 to get away from pre-millennial craziness and wind up just getting on each other's nerves and nursing resentments against the lighthouse manager (Jalil Lespert, who was to shine in Human Resources and later Xavier Beauvois' 2005 Le Petit Lietenant, wasted here). Too tame to build up to anything, this just fizzles out and gives no hint that Cantet would come up with anything as powerful as his next film or as original as the two after that.

Steve Suissa, Dangerous Love/L'amour dangeroux (2003). Netflix DVD.

Starring Nicolas Cazalé as an 18-year-old (he was 25 or 26 at the time) and Jennifer Decker as his 16-year-old girlfriend who runs away with him when he gets into trouble with the law. This is a lackluster "criminal lovers"-type drama, already somewhat weakly (but with critics successfully) developed recently in Benoit Jacquot's A tout de suite (2004). At least Jacquot had his muse, Isild Le Lesco, as the girl in flight and her fugitive Arab boyfriend Bada (Ouassini Embarek) started out with a slight aura of danger and craziness about him. Cazalé's character is just a nice guy in the wrong place and the wrong time. The production is competent as French productions tend to be, but the result is exceptionally lame and bland. Not even listed on Allociné.

Francois Ozon, See the Sea/Regarde la mer (1997). Netflix DVD.

A scruffy girl backpacker Tatiana (Marina de Van) shows up at the beach house of a Parisian young mom, the English Sasha (Sasha Hails), who has a 10-month-old baby--and demands permission to pitch her tent in the back yard. The dad is working in Paris and only shows up at the end of the film's 52-minute running time. (De Van was to appear again in Ozon's Sit Com). The mom preceeds to trust the obviously suspicious and ominously aggressive and affect-less outsider far too much--to the torment of nervous viewers. A rather minimalist horror flick, this shows Ozon's characteristic visual elegance and economy but leans dangerously far toward the more glib aspect of his rarely absent desire to shock. One of the hardest of his films to watch, but not one of the more convincing ones. Various elements strain credulity and others are not even really made clear. Roger Ebert wrote a very good (if typically over-kind) review.. This was Ozon's longest film so far. Though not well reviewed in this country his Criminal Lovers/Les amants criminels (1999), with the naturally combustible couple of Jeremie Renier and real-life girlfriend Natacha Regnier, was longer (96 min.) and a huge improvement.

Gérard Depardieu, Frédéric Auburtin, The Bridge/Un pont entre deux rives (1999, US release 2001). Netflix DVD.

An early-Sixties French provincial adultery tale that lacks energy despite its good cast, Gérard Depardieu, Carole Bouquet, Charles Berling, plus the alluring young Melanie Laurent in her first role as the rich friend's daughter who gets involved with the sweet Tommy (Stanislas Crevillén), 15-year-old son of George (Depardieu) and Mina (Bouquet). Tommy is the unwilling co-conspiritor in Mina's affair with bridge engineer Matthias (Berling). There is doubt, but neither rage nor guilt. Perhaps the most interesting thing is that the mother and young son can discuss her affair frankly between themselves.

Mina falls for the married, relatively glamorous Matthias, but when he's first in bed with her and holds his hand over her shoulder saying "Do you feel the heat--feel the energy?" we don't. Depardieu casts himself against type as a hangdog blue collar man who puts up no fight--which does not add to the energy level either; but he is vulnerable and real as rarely before. Berling is always interesting and Bouquet is subtle. Yet the film has no style and no fire.

Claude Chabrol, A double tour/AKA Leda, 1959. Netflix DVD.

An interesting transitional work, Chabrol's third film, in color, with Madeleine Robinson (Best Actress at Venice for this), about an adulterous husband who's a rich vineyard owner with problems. He's fighting with his wife (Robinson), he's out of touch with his son Richard (André Jocelyn) and daughter Elizabeth (Jeanne Valérie), and he has a young artistic girlfriend Leda (the voluptuous Antonella Lualdi) who gets murdered. Bernadette Lafont is Julie, the maid. Full of Sirkian and Hitchcockian elements, this is Chabrol's bridge from the New Wave to his own brand of bourgeois crime story. This was also a film featuring the young Jean-Paul Belmondo (as "Lazlo Kovacs," an alias he uses in Breathless; he's Elizabeth's disreputable, freeloading boyfriend) just before he became famous, and he's got all the rude grace he put into Godard's debut. Some sequences play too long, but the murder scene is amazing. Not altogether successful, but worth seeing. Probably essential viewing for any Chabrol fan. Somewhat under the radar in its 1961 first US release, this was not available on DVD till recently.

Three recent French films on DVD each seemed to have slipped by the radar, yet each exemplifies in its own different way some of the best aspects of contemporary French filmmaking: individuality, elegance, and emotional honesty. With small budgets, they achieve authenticity that eludes more elaborate productions, yet they are all three stylish and assured.

Raja (Jacques Doillon 2003) Fred (Pascal Greggory) is a rich Frenchman living in Morocco who falls in love with a tomboyish young Arab girl, Raja (Najat Benssallem). Since she's an orphan with a very rocky past and Fred discovers her doing gardening in his yard, how can he and she possibly meet on an equal basis, or with anything other than money as a consideration? This little film is frank about the colonialist aspects of the situation, but it is far more authentically emotional than you might expect (though come to think of it, Greggory is always emotionally raw). This raises its issues with astonishing intimacy. Doillon is the director of the 1996 Ponette.

Clara et moi (Arnaud Viard 2004) In this directorial debut, Viard deals with a cheery, if self-centered 33-year-old actor, Antoine (Julien Boisselier), who falls for Clara (Julie Gayet, of Confusion of Genders and the recent My Best Friend), a young woman he meets on the Metro. Things are wonderful until she develops an unexpected and serious problem. The film is cute, and even bursts into song, and then devolves into a grim reality check. The tone gets over-mixed, but the result is a fair portrait of growing up, and Viard, who also wrote the screenplay, has the courage to present a hero who's by no means altogether appealing. Boisselier's laughs and smiles charm, but do not compltetely convince.

Petite Jerusalem, La (Karin Labou 2005) Focuses on an orthodox family in a Jewish and Jewish immigrant community in an outlying district of Paris. Laura (Fanny Valette) adopts an intellectual pose, but her rationalism is challenged when she becomes attracted to an Arab co-worker, Djamel (Hedi Tillette de Clermont Tonnerre). Her married older sister Mathilde (Elsa Zylberstein), has problems with her disloyal husband (Bruno Todeschini). A spiritual adivisor, played by Aurore Clement, tells her having fun in sex is okay with Hebrew law, even required. Sonia Tahar is the sisters' earthy, but also troublingly superstitious Tunisian-born mother. With lucid, well-lit camera work and actors this good, this can't fail to be subtle and interesting.

I love Raja. It tied for 5th among my favorite foreign-language films of 2004. Here's what I wrote a few years ago:

Jacques Doillon is known in America for Ponette, the only film he directed to receive wide distribution. Raja had an official US premiere in March 2004, but it appears to have had a commercial run only in NYC. It's been rescued from oblivion by the organization "Film Movement" as part of their monthly series of quality dvds. (I've posted about this org before, go to filmmovement.com if curious).
Raja is a 19 y.o. orphan living in Marrakesh who catches the eye of a middle-aged rich Frenchman while working in his garden. The melancholic Fred lives alone and seems adrift in his beautiful estate. Raja has a traumatic past and alternates between a friend's apartment and the room where her boyfriend-cum-pimp lives. Raja's relationship with the latter is rather vague and ambivalent, perhaps all her relationships with men are complicated by negative past experience. Her relationship with Fred is further complicated by disparities in culture, language, age and financial status. Actually, I don't recall another film that depicts with such honesty a more complex, hard-to-pin-down relationship as the Raja and Fred's. What each wants and how they go about getting it changes rather frequently. Yet the film never grows tiresome, it's extremely engaging, compelling even. The political subtext is obviously there, but never made explicit. Fred is played by veteran actor Pascal Greggory. Najat Banssalem won an award for Best New Actress at Cannes '04. Doillon's script and direction are truly special. I need to find room for Raja on my list of favorite foreign language films of 2004.

Many of Doillon's films are unavailable on home video.

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Here's what I wrote a few years ago:

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Thanks for the reminder. Where did you write this--on Filmleaf?

The relationship between Fred and Raja is troubled and troubling and tormented and messy and confusing to them and us, but not complex in the way of a relationship between people who can really communicate verbally and know and intereact with each other for a long time. But it has a fresh, alive, feel--to the extent of seeming so personal it's embarassing, which is kind of unusual in a movie. Fred as a foreign resident breaks all the rules, even hugging and snuggling with his two fat middle-aged cook/housekeepers all the time, and in fact he's completely wacky in his behaviror (and has no apparent occupation or other amusement than running his small estate and fooling around with Raja, so the movie has little context other than the implied two remote--but long interactive--cultures), but Greggory plunges into his role completely and makes it real.

I would also recommend the other two films, especially to anybody who finds the subject matter interesting.

Last film seen was Primeval with Orlando Jones.
I thought it was fuckin' awesome.
Giant-ass Crocodiles going berzerko in Africa.
Lots of freaky action and blood.
A true horror movie that reflects the social and political climate of the continent with giant-ass crocodiles!
What more do you need?
The editing is awesome.
I want to know who edited this movie.
Whoever edited it knew what the hell they were doing.
Seriously- watch this film and pay attention to the editing. And the SFX are pretty boss too.

I though this was a great actioner.
Check it out if you can.

Cinematography by
Edward J. Pei (director of photography)

Film Editing by
Gabriel Wrye


From IMDb
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0772193/fullcredits#cast

Diane Kurys: La Baule-les-Pins (1990)

French divorce, Fifties style

The is a slice of late Fifties middle-class French life as seen during summer at the seaside when the kids' parents' happen to be breaking up. The looks, the behavior, the attitudes in their particularities could only be French. In that sense the film has a certain sociological and cultural interest, and, hopefully, a degree of period accuracy (it's set in 1958). These seem like quieter, more expansive times. The narrator is Frederique (Julie Bataille), the teenage daughter, reading from her diary of the time. However, the film never really gives pride of place to her (or the children's) point of view, but doesn't come in close on the adults either. Consequently the plot lacks a center, as many have noticed.

The subtext behind this diffuseness perhaps is that for a young teenage girl at the seaside with the mother initially absent and the father present only at the end, with a sister and brothers and a pleasant uncle and aunt and an annoying nanny and a young boy she's falling in love with becoming interested in kissing her and a close relationship with the imaginary addressee of her daily diary, the disintegrating marriage of one's parents is by no means the only thing going on. There's a lot to think about and feel about in a teen girl's life, most notably the changes in herself. This is probably the film's and Kurys' real subject--only it's a difficult one to put across and she doesn't quite succeed. Lindon, Bruni-Tedeschi, Bacri, Berry, and Baye have all subsequently been in better films (and some had already). However, they're interesting actors, and the child actors are fine. This film is watchable, even though the action doesn't really go anywhere--develops no real momentum, and winds up with the inevitable: the parents breaking up. La Baule-les-Pins is a sincere effort, and isn't by any means a disaster, but neither is it very good storytelling, nor does it provide a memorable experience. In fact many of the scenes seem clipped from other films.

The Netflix DVD version I watched is entitled C'est la Vie, which is colorless and meaningless. The American distributors couldn't think what this was about either.

The Matrix


Everybody and their dog has seen the Matrix by the Wachowski Bros, and it has a certain status/place in film history.
I saw it again last night on Showcase Action.

It's an impressive visual achievement and a real benchmark for special effects in the movie industry.
There are so many sequences that have extremely complex effects and intricate cgi- and the brothers pull it off. Total exhileration and entertainment.

The idea of it is also why it's such a popular film.
Reality and our perception of it is challenged.
The nature of life itself is deeply pondered, while alien machines cultivate humans to use as batteries.

Characters have strange mysterious names, Neo is supposed to be a type of Superman, a Jesus Christ who saves the world.

Characters plug-in to the Matrix with a weird cyber-socket on the back of their heads while they sit in apocalyptic barber chairs.
Notice the sound of the jack when they plug into the back of their heads? It's sick, man!

The costumes are really stylish. Style is what it's all about.
Can't have no Herb Tarlick shit in this!
Gotta be Airwalk boots and black leather coats and armless/frameless shades.
Not to mention the accessories: semi and fully automatic weapons.

This film is still cool and still amazing as an action film.
A lot of work went into making it, and if you don't like the story (I know a couple people who are sick of the Matrix movies) you still have to admit it's a hit film that influenced a lot of others.

I could write a lot more about it, but you get my gist.

Something for everyone, I guess, for the techie geek and the intellectual, for kids and grownups. However Keanu makes a somewhat blank hero. I like him much better in Pointbreak.

I delved into the topic a bit in connection with Baudrillard and September 11:

http://baltimorechronicle.com/jul03_matrix.shtml

Remember our previous discussion of Matrix Reloaded-?

Christian Faure: A Love to Hide/Un amour a taire (2005). Netflix DVD.

Writing credits: Pascal Fontanille, Samantha Mazeras.

That a movie is painful and disturbing doesn’t make it a good movie. Christian Faure did a wonderful job with emotionally intense gay content in his made-for-TV coming of age/coming out film, Just a Question of Love/Juste une question d’amour in 2000; this was about a contemporary young gay couple. One guy is happily out to his mom. The other is struggling and hasn’t told his parents. This is material Faure handled beautifully. But Un amour a se taire loads the dice too much. This movie develops a love triangle that becomes a love quadrangle and blends in the Holocaust with Nazi persecution of homosexuals along with the “normal” problems of being gay in society and in the family, Forties style. A Jewish girl (Sarah, later called Yvonne: Louise Monot) in flight after her family has been allowed to die by someone supposedly helping them escape (as happens also in Verhoeven’s acclaimed The Black Book) takes refuge with Jean (Jeremie Regnier), a young man she knows from summer vacations at Baule-sur-Mer—who she just happens to be in love with. He’s already in a live-in relationship (how common was that in those days?) with a somewhat older man, Philippe (Bruno Todeschini)—so that’s the triangle.. Jean also has a crooked Nazi collaborator brother, Jacques (Nicolas Gob), who is disturbed when he gets out of jail and learns Jean is gay but still loves him—in his fashion. Only that fashion turns out to be completely destructive. Things end in complete horror. The movie apparently wants to remind us that gays too were sent to camps and killed by the Nazis. We knew that, and it has been represented in movies several times in recent years. Did we need all the love complications and the Jewish girl—and her getting involved with the collabo brother—leading to the quadrangle? All this is way too much, and never seems emotionally believable. It is also harder imagining the better-known Jeremie Regnier and Bruno Tedeschini as a gay couple than it was in Just a Questtion of Love with the less familiar Cyrille Thouvenin and Stéphan Guérin-Tillié, who, in story less overloaded with plot twists and historical atmosphere, also have a better chance to establish their relationship for viewers. As Sarah/Yvonne, Monot is beautiful and soulful, gamely negotiating plot twists that leave her character's personality a mystery. Gob as the bad brother, who eventually marries Yvonne, has no depth, but maybe he doesn't need any for his confusingly written part. The production values and acting in both TV films are fine. But Un amour a taire is just too ambitious and overwrought.

Kiyoshi Kurosawa: Bright Future/Akarui mirai (2003). Netflix.

The elusive invertebrate

Whatever Kiyoshi Kurosawa is to the Japanese audience, for Americans he's distinctly an acquired taste. Cure struck me immediately however as haunting, creepy, and drably beautiful; it's just that one can't imagine a steady diet of such stuff. Pulse, typically stylish and moody, is completely different (and too similar to the "Ringu" franchise), but the only other Kurosawa I've seen so far, Bright Future is something else again. Symbolic interpretations of the two aimless, dangerous boys as some kind of statement about Japan's youth seem simple-minded and naive, though surely the ironic title makes that possibility all too obvious. Anyway, the presence of young people both does and does not mean anything in Kurosawa's films. He works very loosely within genres that appeal to youth, but his approach is consistently indirect and enigmatic. What strikes me is the relationship between Nimura and Mamoru--roommates and buddies on the surface, but underneath slave and master, follower and sensei, or symbiotic zombie couple--whose "child" is the symbolic poisonous jellyfish. Their lack of affect turns modern Japanese youth on its head because they're quietly terrifying and somehow also super cool, Nimura's ragged clothing a radical fashion statement and his wild hair and sculptured looks worthy of a fashion model.Mr Fujiwara is the ultimate bourgeois clueless work buddy jerk (he combines two or three different kinds of undesirable associate); but we don't usually kill them. Kurosawa films seem to usually go in the direction of some kind of muted apocalypse, but they proceed toward it casually, as if he didn't quite care where things were going.

That's because the atmosphere and look of his films are the real subjects; like any great filmmaker he begins and ends with image and sound. Note the bland, cheerful music that pops up at the darnedest places. The relationship that develops between Nimura and Shin'ichirô, Mamoru's father, after Mamoru is no more, and the scenes of Shin'ichirô's cluttered yet desolate workshop/dwelling recall Akira Kurosawa's Dodeskaden but also Italian neorealism and the clan of directionless but uniformed young bad boys who wander through the street in the long final tracking shot evokes Antonioni and the mute clowns in Blow-Up. Kiyoshi Kurosawa's framing, his use of empty urban long shots, is akin to the vision of Antonioni. If it's true that this cool stuff is all too appealing to film school dropouts ready to concoct a deep interpretation of every aimless sequence, it's also true that Kurosawa like no other living director creates his own haunting and disturbing moods, and it would be fun to compare this movie with Bong Joon-ho's boisterous The Host.

Bertrand Bonello: The Pornographer/Le pornographe (2001). Netflix.

I have to give credit to Johnny Web (Uncle Scoopy) on a website called "Movie House" for his spot-on summing up of this film by a French Canadian Fema prof: as "basically Boogie Nights, as reimagined by Dostoevsky and directed by Ingmar Bergman." The style is austere, elegant, and very French; also very detached from reality. I was interested because it stars Truffaut icon Jean-Pierre Leaud and new young star Jeremie Regnier (of the Dardennes' La Promesse and L'Enfant). Interesting to see the two generations together, but it's just looking. The story, despite an actual live sex scene involving a well-endowed stud and a real porn actress called Ovidie( money shot cut by the Brits for theatrical screening but not from this DVD) is slow and gloomy, but pretty. Regnier's scenes with fellow student radicals are something more out of 60's Godard than anything in 2001 (but without Godard's energy and mental stimulation) and the whole film is arty and out of touch, but, as I said, pretty. Given his age I kept wondering of Leaud dyes his long lanky black hair--or even if it was a wig. In the story, he has abandoned porno and then goes back to it. His son Joseph (Regnier) has abandoned him after learning his occupation, but they start meeting again. Meanwhile he moves out from his wife, though he can't for the life of him say why he does that. It's suggested that today's porno makers are more soulless than those of Leaud's character's working heyday; however, the contrast of styles and technologies isn't worked out. Another onliine DVD reviewer, Scott Weinberg, wrote that the movie contains a short episode of "hardcore sex-making, and a whole honking lot of pretentious navel-gazing and middle-aged angst blatherings. If French films have a reputation for being slow and ponderous and more than a little self-indulgent, it's because of examples like this one." Well, I have a great deal of tolerance for these aspects of French film so I had no trouble. But the film seemed more style than substance.

Claire Denis: Beau travail (1999) Netflix.

This I had to re-watch because I clearly undervalued it when it was first shown. I thought it was silly playing around, and beefcake. A woman director luxuriating self-indulgently in male bodies. After seeing Denis' L'Intrus/The Intruder I got a skeleton key to her vision; I realized she's a fantastic filmmaker whose work can be complex, allusive, and demanding of one's fullest attention. And she has about as much panache and originality as any director. Given the high general critical rating of Beau travail (Rosenbaum called it a "masterpiece"), I saw I had to go back to it. The editing is poetic and impressionistic. Only Denis could put together her images and sequences as she does. This minimalist reworking of Billy Budd only enters its main plot in the last twenty minutes. The earlier sequences of the Foreign Legionaires in remotest Djibouti are almost plotless, but in their abstract way they give you the feel of military life (as I knew it as a lowly soldier in the US Army, & as I came to imagine it from that perspective) better than almost any other movie. Making a bed with perfect precision and then getting drunk and dancing disco, washing out your skivvies and ironing them and digging a trench fifteen feet deep in hard ground till your hands are bleeding--that's indeed military life. So are the lovingly nurtured irrational resentments. The music (particularly Benjamin Britain's Billy Budd) makes the movie austerely operatic. And there's also disco and a weird Neil Young song about a shopping cart and a ghetto smile that somehow fits with men marching across the desert. Only Clair Denis could make this work. One could also say a lot about the casting. The men are all extremely fit. The three leads are perfect. There is something noble but also provocative and annoying about Gregoire Colin, as Servain, the young legionnaire hated by Galoup (Denis Lavant); and one feels it in his other roles, all of which are memorable (he also appears in L'Intrus). Lavant is enigmatic, tough; his gnarly, strangely damaged looking face seems to hide an interior that's not quite right. Subor as the commander, Forrestier, is perfectly urbane, wise, and above it all (Subor was to star in L'Intrus). L'Intru is the more complex and exciting film, but not necessarily the better one. Beau travai is as beautiful as its name. The director knows wherof she speaks, being a military child who grew up in Africa, including Djibouti.

Dominik Moll: Lemming. (2006) Netflix DVD.

Moll's earlier With a Friend Like Harry, with the scarily gregarious crazy character played by Sergi Lopez, was somewhat immprovisational but each sequence was powerful and the whole thing worked well because it was unified by the character and didn't go on too long. This has too much and goes on too long and situations are more uneasy than scary. There is the interest of a movie with the two Charlottes, Rampling and Gainsbourg, and Laurant Lucas is appealing and nicely neutral as the central character. But what's the point of the lemmings, really? Are they needed? The simple device of a nightmare guest is carried to an extreme, with some kind of cosmic crossover of her personality to the wife's later. And the gimmicky house-surveillance equipment is another distraction. Too much going on and too little focus--with a too-violent climax and a too-easy, too-rosy denoument. Hope remains that Moll will put together a more coherent story next time and make better use of his echoes of Hitchcock and Highsmith.

Eric Rohmer. Boyfriends and Girlfriends/L’ami de mon amie. 1987. Netflix DVD.

I’ve seen this before, but Rohmer is always worth returning to. A word about the title. Various American critics such as Roger Ebert or Jonathan Rosenbaum have translated it, but missed the point. The proverb is “L’ami de mon ami est mon ami,” “my friend’s friend is my friend,” which in the French is sex-neutral. But the film title means “the [male] friend of my [female] friend,” which is ironic: the point is that when sex is involved the rules change and the proverb becomes problematic. The English titles for many of Rohmer's films lose an essential point--this one particularly.

It’s a little bit easier to confuse Rohmer's later films, the Proverbs/Proverbes series, with one another than is true with the earlier ones like My Night at Maude’s or Claire’s Knee, the Moral Tales/Contes moraux; and the Proverbs are accused of being superficial or “fluffy.” True, nothing Rohmer's made since has (on a certain level anyway) the depth of My Night at Maude’s, with its complicated philosophical, moral, and religious discussions. But though their dialogue may seem simpler, the Proverbs are subtle. In this one (L'ami de mon amie), the somewhat shy, sensitive Blanche (Emmanuelle Chaulet) is convinced she is in love with the dashing, accomplished Alexandre (François-Eric Gendron), even though he never gives any sign of more than a polite interest in her. Her new friend Lea (Sophie Renoir) is more down to earth and relaxed, and Lea seems at odds with her boyfriend, Fabien (Eric Viellard). Lea also happens to know Alexandre and be on friendly terms with him, which turns out to be significant later. The truth is that from the start the sweet, affectionate Fabien is enormously attracted to Blanche but it takes her a long time to realize that the way they click together not just in conversation but later in bed means they ought to be girlfriend and boyfriend, because she cherishes the fantasy of Alexandre. She also allows herself to be deterred by the fact that Lea and Fabien are nominally “together," and by the rule that the boyfriend of one’s friend is off limits, whatever that proverb says. But the signs have always been there that Lea and Fabien don’t really care for each other—or get along very well; but Fabien is too polite and well-behaved for either that, or his passion for Blanche, to be immediately obvious. A recurrent theme is how good manners are necessary but can slow the paths of love. The subtlety of the film is in every line and every expression of the actors, especially Vieillard, whose expressions and body language show his attraction to Blanche from their first encounter.

American reviews of Boyfriends and Girlfriends have made much of the fact that the film takes place in one of the New Cities/Nouvelles Villes outside central Paris, but very different from the ghetto-like banlieux where the riots have taken place. These New Cities are posh, elegant, but slightly sterile complexes where one can live and work and shop tantalizingly in view of La Defense and the Tour Eiffel. This new environment is interpreted by several American reviewers as corresponding to a "yuppie" superficiality in the characters, but nothing much is made of the setting in this film. It’s just a given, something more useful to neutralize the background and thus focus more completely on the nuances of the dialogue and the freshness and perfection of the young characters than to make any sociological point. There were superficial yuppies in the Moral Tales world too, even if most of those characters had messier hair and smoked more cigarettes. This is the difference between the Seventies and the Eighties. In Rohmer's 1984 Full Moon in Paris/Les nuits de la pleine lune the suburbs vs. central Paris issue is made important, and raised as an issue and there is where Fabrice Lucchini’s (highly articulate and intellectual) character declares that Paris (meaning the old central Paris) is “the center of the world.” Admittedly that is a more complex film, but often, as in Rohmer’s 1986 Summer/Le rayon vert, a delicacy is achieved, which should definitely not be confused with superficiality, that highlights the sensitivity of a female character, memorably in Le rayon vert that of the actress Marie Riviere. Later, in 1996, this character is Margot (Amanda Langlet), the sweet girl whom the fickle Gaspard (Melvil Poupaud) discounts because she isn’t sexy or hard-to-get enough, rather like the way Blanche discounts Fabien. These permutations and combinations are not so simple when you watch all Rohmer’s films and see the way he continually brings up a certain kind of character and kind of behavior and looks at it each time from a different angle, with different results.

I'm checking out Antonioni's 1975 film The Passenger in about 1 hour.
I'll post after I see it.
(Haven't seen it before. Looking very forward to it...)

Antonioini's The Passenger/AKA/Prefessione: Reporter I saw a couple years ago at the NYFF and liked it quite a bit more than I remembered when it was new(er) as I wrote in the Festival Coverage section for the NYFF. See what you think of that long final take, and the young Jack. Did you ever see him in Five Easy Pieces?

Yes I've seen Five Easy Pieces. It's amazing.
And so is The Passenger, which I just saw.

Some breathtaking imagery is on full display.
There are some absolutely glorious shots in this film, from the architecture inside cathedrals to rooftop panoramas to a bird's eye view from a tram.
(I was in awe of that shot of Jack pretending to fly, arms outstretched above the water- what an amazing bit of cinema.)

The editing is wonderful too- my favorite sequence was the shots of Jack driving with Maria, through the tree-lined road. What cinema nirvana to me.

Jack Nicholson is quite svelte here, and a woman sitting behind me commented that he had a nice bum.
He's in Chad, he's in Spain, he's in Barcelona, he's here, there and everywhere after stealing some dead dude's identity.

The landscapes that Antonioni captures are awesome.
The architecture also gets his special eye.
He was in some kind of artistic groove here, giving serious flavor and ethnicity to the scenes. I loved this film. So happy I got to see it properly, with a print that was on loan from the U.S.