PARIS OCTOBER 2007: briefly noted

Caramel has now been released in the USA and I enjoyed it. It would be obvious to compare it to Steel Magnolias, Beauty Shop, and Venus Beauty Institute for thematic reasons. I think Caramel is better than those three, including the surprising Cesar winner for Best Film, Best Director and Best Screenplay (Venus Beauty Institute). However, your comparison to Monsieur Ibrahim is inspired and appropriate. I liked the handling of the relationship between the seamstress and the white-haired gentleman and the lesbian relationship more than anything. But this film is charming and assured throughout. Not much disagreement with you other than your characterization of the structure as "weak".

Strand Releasing will distribute Before I forget in the US and Canada.

Before I Forget is not for everyone. It's a very gay film. It's surprising to me that these two that I saw in Paris have gotten US distribution and Caramel has done very well with the reviewers. I would not have suspected. You may be right that France produces just as many mediocre movies as the USA, but in Paris as in NYC one can see a much more interesting array of films in regular, nice, commercial cinemas than one can in the rest of this country generally. Still Life and All Is Forgiven were two that were special limited showings also, like Before I Forget; Caramel was a regular scheduled showing. It looks like several others that I saw in Paris are going to get a US run--including Miller's A Secret.

I'm going to check out PORN THEATER (netflix) by the director of Before I Forget before the latter comes to theaters. Have you seen it?

Yes, I have seen it. I thought it was strange and very low keyed. Definitely the same sensibility, but this new one is relatively brighter and more sociable.

I watched Porn Theater and I am impressed. I know of three films set entirely in a theater and Nolot's came first. With porn increasingly something people watch at home, as opposed to a public space, Porn Theater has been characterized by a couple of critics as an homage to a kind of place or scene that is no more. I'm not so sure about that. I enjoyed the film as a sort of social anthropology. I found it particularly interesting in that I've never been to a porn theater, not even when I was young and they were all over the place. I like how Nolot alternates between the almost silent happenings inside the theater and the verbal interaction in and around the ticket booth. IGood script by Nolot himself, who's written for others, including Techine. I recognized him from his performances in Wild Reeds, among others. Porn Theater feels very authentic for several reasons, including the explicitness of some of the sex scenes. When cops raid the theater, one comments on the irony that the film being projected is a "straight sex" movie. Nolot carries the irony further by appropiating the French title of the film being shown. I wonder if filmgoers in France thought they'd be watching a "staright" movie. Nolot's debut, L'Arriere pays is reportedly autobiographical. I wonder if there are parallels between Nolot and the character he plays here: a middle-aged gay man who's been HIV+ for a long time and pretends to be married because he believes potential gay lovers find that "reassuring". Very much looking forward to his third feature.

Porn theaters played a much bigger role in gay than in straight life, and AIDS is the main reason for their demise, more than the arrival of video and DVD.

As you obviously know since you've researched all this better than I have, Nolot met Techine when studying drama (like I DON'T KISS's protagonist) and a long friendship and collaboration with acting roles in five Techine features and one short film followed. The short film is a chapter in Nolot's autobiography that comes after I DON'T KISS: LA MATIOUETTE OU L'ARRIERE-PAYS. I haven't seen it either.

The Techine that Nolot contributed most to the writing of is as you no doubt know I DON'T KISS, a story referring to the most important early period in Nolot's life, as BEFORE I FORGET refers to an important later chapter; the difference (a step forward?) is Nolot plays the autobiographical character in BEFORE I FORGET because the story is about a man his age; is contemporary with his present existence and that of his current friends, those of them who are still living.

In fact Nolot has acknowledged that BEFORE I FORGET is a "film a' clefs" with lots of guarded and not so guarded references to real people; to begin with the French film world is a small and incestuous one; but the diaristic process, in some ways therapeutic, is also a distancing; and the elegance of the filmmaking sets off the sordidness of the subject matter or locales.The finale of BEFORE I FORGET shows Pierre (Nolot) in drag entering a porno theater, thus returning to the scene of the previous film. There are interesting comments on this in "le blog de bernard alapetite" (in French) online. http://alapetite.canalblog.com/archi.../22/index.html

David Ng in the VOICE: "The original title of Jacques Nolot's Porn Theatre is La Chatte Ã* Deux Têtes (The Two-Headed Pussy)—a misleading appellation considering most of its lonely characters would prefer a nice, juicy cock." He points out that the question the cop asks, "Why don't these faggots see gay films?" is "left unanswered." Maybe it's so as not to get distracted from their cruising by what's happening on screen. Or maybe the straight porno houses in Paris were just bigger and better, if there even were gay ones. I don't know. I personally can attest to a familiarity with gay porno and a more limited familiarity with gay porn theaters, but no experience of the nether world of men's room or backroom gay sex with which some gay men, including Nolot, are conversant. Anyway, US reviews of this film don't go into any depth, not even Ng, despite his mentioning Tsai. The flat English title PORN THEATER, to begin with, is a blunt and literal reduction that's a bad lead-in to the film. THE TWO-HEADED PUSSY could mean varous things; the main relationships seem to revolve around a woman, the ticket seller.

Obviously though you don't mention the Asian film by name you like LA CHATTE A DEUX TETES for its harmony with Tsai Mind-liang's GOODBYE, DRAGON INN, which Ng does mention. I am so conventional as to prefer movies where things happen, and hence I would definitely rate BEFORE I FORGET higher and look forward to re-watching it eventually to delve into more of the implications and ironies of the conversations. I think more of the appeal of Nolot for the cinephile is that he's definitely the kind of filmmaker that's more for studying than casual watching.

Interesting material on the Techine/Nolot connection. Hope both have long careers.

Indeed the other two films I know that take place entirely inside a theater are Lisandro Alonso's Fantasma and Tsai Ming Liang's Goodbye Dragon Inn. The latter had more of an impact on me that Porn Theater because of the mise-en-scene and the use long takes (a device used for the first time_or so my viewing would indicate_ in Kenji Mizoguchi's Story of the Last Chrysanthemum (1939) in which cuts are spaced as long as three minutes apart). Besides, Tsai's film mourns the end of the era of stand-alone, huge movie palaces. I was particularly moved by the premise of an old actor (Tien Mao playing himself just before he died) taking his grandson to the last screening at such a theater prior to demolition; a screening of King Hu's epic Dragon Inn, a landmark of Chinese cinema.

Your comment that Nolot is "the kind of filmmaker that's more for studying than casual watching" makes sense in general. However, I don't know that I personally can watch movies "casually".

Surely one can watch many movies without studying them, casually, though one may study them later. Some things crumble under analysis though. I understand your preference for and reasons for liking Goodbye, Dragon Inn. However both that and Nolot's La chatte a' deux tetes are a bit depressing and at the same time don't arouse maximum enthusiasm in me. I can see understanding Nolot, with "study," mainly meaning just seeing more of his films, better than I ever will Tsai Ming-liang.